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February 11, 2025
Trump v. CBS: When Politics, Journalism, Business, and FCC Authority Collide
Shortly after Donald Trump sued CBS in October over what he called “false, misleading, deceptive, and, therefore, unconscionable and detrimental news distortion” in editing a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, I contended that the lawsuit was likely meritless. While explaining that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is responsible for enforcing a rule against news distortion by over-the-air broadcasters, I questioned the lawsuit’s…
February 11, 2025
The Critical Role of Administration Officials in America’s AI Future
As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms the global economy, the success of America’s AI strategy depends on the expertise and leadership of administration officials nominated and confirmed by Congress. These public servants are essential in turning technological opportunities into real benefits for Americans while ensuring responsible innovation and economic growth. Administration officials, especially those leading key…
February 10, 2025
Resilience: The New Challenge for Digital Systems Policy
Yesterday around 11:00 am, while working from home preparing course material for the next university semester, all Microsoft cloud-related connection to my university was severed. No OneDrive access to my files, no Teams to contact the information technology helpdesk, no Outlook to email my manager about my predicament …. I was truly isolated. Fortunately, the…
February 10, 2025
Unshackle States to Deliver on Broadband Promises
The Biden administration’s handling of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program exemplifies why Americans turned to Donald Trump to be their president: big promises, bureaucratic bloat, and little to show for either. This presents an opportunity for Trump to deliver what others only promise. For its first three years, BEAD did…
February 7, 2025
Lessons from China’s DeepSeek: A Wake-Up Call for AI Innovation
In just a week, Chinese startup DeepSeek’s latest reasoning model erased a trillion dollars in market value, sparked new security concerns, and upended conventional wisdom about AI development. This forced policymakers and tech leaders to confront the implications of an affordable, high-performance model created by a geopolitical competitor. DeepSeek unveiled DeepSeek-R1, an advanced large language model…
February 7, 2025
Taking On Government Bureaucracy (with Shane Bigelow)
DMVs are notoriously slow, primarily because of outdated systems that constitute the foundation of their operations. Nevertheless, these processes can be greatly improved by adopting modern, efficient solutions. Such innovations not only enhance DMV operations but also offer valuable insights into the modernization of other sluggish government functions, potentially streamlining services across various sectors. Below…
February 6, 2025
When Anti-Press Ascendancy Meets FCC Public Interest Regulation
Let’s start with an understatement: President Donald Trump isn’t happy with the way most American journalists are doing their jobs. During a December press conference, he proclaimed “we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.” About six weeks earlier, Trump sued CBS, trying to straighten it out. The complaint…
February 4, 2025
The Value of Waiting: What Finance Theory Can Teach Us About the Value of Not Passing AI Bills
Nearly every time I am asked about AI governance, I’m asked some version of this question: The government runs slow and AI businesses are running fast; is the government keeping up? Adam Thierer put together the graph below which captures the idea, known as the pacing problem. While our technological capabilities sprint ahead, our social and legal…
February 3, 2025
Will Fresh Eyes Oversee Secret Surveillance?
The recent hearing on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence inspires some observations on surveillance and society in the form of a book review. My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File (Duke University Press, 2018) is Katherine Verdery’s memoir of decades of anthropological fieldwork in Romania delivered through the lens of her…
January 31, 2025
Free Speech and the Tech Leaders’ Presence at Trump’s Swearing-In Ceremony
It was impossible to miss them during the swearing-in ceremony for President Donald Trump: The über-wealthy leaders of some of the world’s most prominent and important technology companies, clustered tightly together in the Capitol Rotunda. As Politico wrote, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sundar Pinchai garnered “primo placement on the inaugural seating chart.” Apple CEO…