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
Why Utah’s ‘Simple’ Social Media Reform Could Set a Dangerous Privacy Precedent
The way that it is framed, you’d think that Utah’s HB418 is just a simple change to Utah’s privacy law. They are just “Data Sharing Amendments,” after all. But beneath that innocuous label lies a sweeping proposal that would make Utah the first state in the nation to require the most technically demanding and privacy invasive form…
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 One of the big problems was how quickly expert estimates become outdated, not due to any fault on the part of the experts, but because of how rapidly AI is evolving….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
Innovating Future Power Systems: From Vision to Action
Key Points Executive Summary The global energy landscape is transforming, and nowhere is this more evident than the electricity sector. Technological advancements, shifting economic conditions, and evolving environmental policies are converging to reshape the way power systems operate. This report explores the implications of these changes for the future of power systems, focusing on the…
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 19, 2025
Regional Transmission Organizations as Market Platforms IV
Networks shape modern life. From roads to the internet to global supply chains, they enable movement, exchange, and value creation. But networks also suffer from congestion, a problem driven by both physical limitations and the difficulty of defining and enforcing property rights. In some networks, pricing mechanisms can help mitigate congestion, but political and regulatory…
February 19, 2025
Trump’s Tariffs Would Prime Prices at the Gas Pump
Donald Trump promised tariffs, and he delivered, imposing by executive fiat tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada (10 percent on Canadian energy) and Mexico and 10 percent on imports from China. His justifications are “the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl,” and our “major trade deficits with those countries.” According…
February 19, 2025
Free Speech or Culpable Conduct? When Role-playing Chatbots Allegedly Harm Minors
In November, I examined a federal lawsuit filed by a Florida mother who claims that Character.AI ––a platform operated by Character Technologies, Inc.––and affiliated companies Alphabet and Google are civilly liable for her 14-year-old son’s suicide allegedly caused by a roleplaying chatbot. The outcome of Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc. may prove momentous for two reasons. First, it could…
February 19, 2025
Global Encryption Under Siege: How UK’s Apple Backdoor Demand Threatens International Security
The recent U.K. government directive mandating Apple to establish encryption backdoors underscores a vital debate surrounding digital privacy and security. While law enforcement contends that these backdoors are crucial for crime investigations, the reality is that any deliberate weakness in encryption introduces vulnerabilities that endanger all users. Encryption serves as the foundation of digital security,…
February 18, 2025
Another Step Forward in NEPA Reform
America’s system of environmental reviews has been choking progress for a half-century. A key culprit: the National Environmental Policy Act, once a seemingly sensible safeguard that has metastasized into a bureaucratic quagmire that can entangle projects for years at great cost. As I write in my 2023 book, The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi…