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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
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 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…
April 16, 2025
Bastiat and What is Not Seen in Tech Policy
Over at The Dispatch, AEI Senior Fellow Jonah Goldberg recently praised Frédéric Bastiat’s classic essay, “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.” Goldberg cited the piece to critique the Trump administration’s seemingly-attractive-but-deeply-flawed approach to trade. I’ve found that this short 1850 treatise is equally illuminating when assessing 21st century tech policy. As…
April 15, 2025
Censorship is Anti-American
On March 25, Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University — “a Fulbright scholar working on a PhD in child study and human development on an F-1 student visa” — was detained by six plain clothes government officials as she walked down a Boston street. Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that a State Department memo, prepared…
April 15, 2025
The AI Race Accelerates: Key Insights from the 2025 AI Index Report
The 2025 AI Index Report, recently released by Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), offers an insightful overview of the current state and trajectory of artificial intelligence (AI). While the comprehensive report spans an extensive 456 pages, here are the top six observations that stood out: 1. AI Nears Human-Level Performance AI research accelerated dramatically in…
April 15, 2025
Irony, Congress, and the FCC: The Broadcast Freedom and Independence Act of 2025
In a sure sign of our topsy-turvy political times, Democrats in the US Senate and House of Representatives are sponsoring legislation that seeks both to rein in the reach of federal regulatory authority and to promote the fundamental First Amendment value that expression of all viewpoints should be allowed rather than squelched and punished by…