Parents or States: Who Should Decide How Much Social Media Time is Too Much?
Article
AEIdeas

Parents or States: Who Should Decide How Much Social Media Time is Too Much?

A federal judge’s February ruling blocking Virginia’s enforcement of a statute that imposes a one-hour-per-day default limit for minors using a social media platform correctly puts parents––not the government––back in…

The Lithography Loophole: How China Is Printing Its Way to Chip Self-Sufficiency
Report
The American Enterprise Institute

The Lithography Loophole: How China Is Printing Its Way to Chip Self-Sufficiency

China’s fleet of several hundred deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines will almost certainly be capable of printing millions of high-end logic dies in 2026, which Huawei will package into high-end…

AI Competition with China Continues to Heat Up
Article
AEIdeas

AI Competition with China Continues to Heat Up

As major artificial intelligence breakthroughs arrive on what seems to be a near-weekly basis, the race between the US and China continues to intensify. In this post and the next,…

The Paper That Breaks Climate Economics
Article
The Honest Broker

The Paper That Breaks Climate Economics

Part 1 of 2 on a damning new paper that takes on the top-down climate-economics literature — “The empirically inscrutable climate-economy relationship”

Anthropic’s Project Glasswing Is a Warning: Technical Debt Is Now a National Security Risk
Article
AEIdeas

Anthropic’s Project Glasswing Is a Warning: Technical Debt Is Now a National Security Risk

Anthropic’s launch of Project Glasswing should be understood less as a product announcement and more as a policy warning.

Tornado Damage and Frequency: An Update Through 2025
Article
The Honest Broker

Tornado Damage and Frequency: An Update Through 2025

Today, I share the latest data on normalized U.S. tornado losses since 1954 and a time series of the incidence of the strongest tornadoes since 1975. I doubt you’ll come…

Is “Safety by Design” Ever Feasible in an Uncertain World?
Article
AEIdeas

Is “Safety by Design” Ever Feasible in an Uncertain World?

Safety by Design is anchored in a world of engineering certainty that defies the complex realities of outcomes coproduced by platforms and their users. Just as with playgrounds, the burden…

Can Cryptocurrency Go Mainstream?
Article
AEIdeas

Can Cryptocurrency Go Mainstream?

Shane is joined by Marc Boiron and Nicoletta Kolpakov to discuss the road to widespread adoption of cryptocurrency.

Can the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Sue States for Attacking Prediction Markets?
Article
AEIdeas

Can the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Sue States for Attacking Prediction Markets?

The CFTC should stand down and let these anti-prediction-market states lose directly on the merits.

Of Free Speech Claims and Supply Chain Risks: Anthropic’s Battle with the Government
Article
AEIdeas

Of Free Speech Claims and Supply Chain Risks: Anthropic’s Battle with the Government

Anthropic’s First Amendment retaliation claim against the Department of War and Pete Hegseth spans two lawsuits and features two federal statutes affecting national security supply-chain risk designations. The artificial intelligence…

The University Problem
Article
The Honest Broker

The University Problem

I appreciate the invitation, surely a positive sign of an intellectual thaw. At the same time, the university gave in to a demand that I be removed from the original…

Is Australian Social Media Age-Gating Working?
Article
AEIdeas

Is Australian Social Media Age-Gating Working?

Just over three months ago, Australia’s world-leading regulations attempting to ban social media use by under-16s came into force. The relevant regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, has released its first compliance…

Moving the Economy On-Chain (with Marc Boiron and Nicoletta Kolpakov)
Podcast

Moving the Economy On-Chain (with Marc Boiron and Nicoletta Kolpakov)

As the digitization of the economy accelerates, the friction points facing the adoption of cryptocurrency are becoming more evident. The benefits of on-ramping to stablecoin are obvious: faster and more…

More Problems With the FJC Science Manual for Federal Judges
Article
The Honest Broker

More Problems With the FJC Science Manual for Federal Judges

Today, I return to the FJC Manual to discuss another of its chapters: How Science Works, which underlies the entire volume. The chapter appears to be telling judges “how science…

AI Has Been A Race to the Bottom, Towards Alignment
Article
Exformation

AI Has Been A Race to the Bottom, Towards Alignment

AI has been involved in a race to the bottom, but it’s been towards more alignment. The competitive pressure to release new models has also created powerful incentives to build…