Article
The Honest Broker

A Takeover of the IPCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released the names of its authors for its seventh assessment report (AR7). The author list for its Chapter 3 — Changes in regional climate…

Prison Call Order Delays Reform of Market Ripe for Disruption
Article
AEIdeas

Prison Call Order Delays Reform of Market Ripe for Disruption

Earlier this summer, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unexpectedly delayed implementation of its 2024 prison call order until 2027. The order, which was mandated by Congress and had bipartisan support…

When Fact Checkers Stop Checking Facts
Article
AEIdeas

When Fact Checkers Stop Checking Facts

A recent Washington Post headline claimed its tech columnist, Geoffrey Fowler, had shown that “Meta’s new crowdsourced system to fight falsehoods [has] failed to make a dent.” The claim would…

Article
The Honst Broker

Too Big to Fail

In 2024, Nature published “The Economic Commitment of Climate Change,” by Kotz et al. (KLW24). A press release accompanying the paper’s publication announced that it projected enormous future GDP losses due to climate change,…

Dial-Up Internet May Be History, but It Still Conditions Our Current Internet Experience
Article
AEIdeas

Dial-Up Internet May Be History, but It Still Conditions Our Current Internet Experience

This week’s announcement that AOL will be discontinuing its dial-up internet access service on September 30 triggered a bout of nostalgia in me—an internet dinosaur who first dialed up to…

Illinois Bans AI Therapy. Questions about Enforcement Remain.
Article
AEIdeas

Illinois Bans AI Therapy. Questions about Enforcement Remain.

Last week, my home state of Illinois became one of the first in the nation to ban AI therapy when Governor Pritzker signed the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources…

Who Owns Information? Governments Are Asking the Wrong Question.
Article
AEIdeas

Who Owns Information? Governments Are Asking the Wrong Question.

Who should control data? The question is increasingly central to policy debates in Washington, Brussels, and Silicon Valley. It’s being asked in antitrust lawsuits, AI regulation proposals, and sweeping data…

Reading the Mind of the Machine: Why GPT-5’s Chain-of-Thought Monitoring Matters for AI Safety
Article
AEIdeas

Reading the Mind of the Machine: Why GPT-5’s Chain-of-Thought Monitoring Matters for AI Safety

When OpenAI released GPT-5 last week, most coverage focused on the model’s performance gains, including fewer hallucinations, stronger multilingual abilities, and state-of-the-art results in health tasks. But buried deep in…

Understanding Why the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Is Narrow
Article
AEIdeas

Understanding Why the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton Is Narrow

With the US Supreme Court now considering in NetChoice v. Fitch whether to reinstate an injunction blocking enforcement of Mississippi’s online age-verification and parental-consent law, it’s vital to understand the…

The Climate Beat Goes On
Article
The Honest Broker

The Climate Beat Goes On

Last week I was contacted by two reporters at the Associated Press with a request to comment on the Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (DOE CWG) report and the proposal by the…

The Climate Conversation is Changing
Article
The Honest Broker

The Climate Conversation is Changing

Later this week here at THB I’ll be publishing two important pieces — one a guest post from a climate scientist on how his work was cited in the DOE…

Is Making Platforms Responsible for Banning Australian Children’s Use a Straw Man?
Article
AEIdeas

Is Making Platforms Responsible for Banning Australian Children’s Use a Straw Man?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Australian federal government is forging ahead with its “world-leading” legislation aimed at protecting Australian under-16s from social media harms. Last week, it was announced that YouTube—previously…

Securing Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI
Article
AEIdeas

Securing Critical Infrastructure in the Age of AI

The Trump administration’s America’s AI Action Plan—released in July—takes a significant step toward positioning artificial intelligence as both a national asset and a defense tool. One of its most notable…

Some Property Rights Archaeology
Article
AEIdeas

Some Property Rights Archaeology

In a recent post, I discussed the interesting response to the idea that information has taken on the characteristics of common-law property: “That would be a bad idea.” Saying so…

Well Cited
Article
The Honest Broker

Well Cited

Last week, a colleague of mine sent me a copy of an email that they had received from ClimateBrief, a UK-based advocacy journalism group. The email asked for examples of how…