June 20, 2025
The Invisible Price Tag of Yesterday’s Regulation
Two snapshots, one static institution In 1915, Kansas City Power & Light convinced regulators that stringing copper wires across the prairie would bring “abundant, cheap light for every home”. Today, a data center developer requesting 300 MW for a new facility is instructed to join a five-year interconnection queue. While the physical infrastructure has expanded…
June 20, 2025
Why America Cannot Afford to Wait Anymore: The Need for Spectrum Auction Reauthorization
In the continuous evolution of wireless technology and telecommunications, few issues carry as much strategic importance as the allocation of spectrum. The recent announcement by the Senate Commerce Committee, regarding a comprehensive spectrum deal, represents more than just another legislative compromise—it’s a critical step toward securing America’s technological and economic future. While the proposal includes…
June 20, 2025
Smartphones and Adolescent Mental Health: The Experts’ View
Do smartphones and social media use negatively impact adolescent mental health? Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his high-profile work The Anxious Generation, published last year, certainly thinks so. So do policymakers across a range of jurisdictions, who have variously banned smartphones in schools (New Zealand), made it illegal for under-16s to have social media accounts (Australia), and…
June 18, 2025
Outcome in Precedent-Setting Libel Case Against OpenAI is Good Public Policy
Imagine a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tool such as ChatGPT produces false and defamatory content about you in response to a journalist’s query. The journalist then incorporates the same libelous statements into an article that her newspaper publishes. What are your odds of winning a libel case against the maker of the GenAI tool? They’re…
June 17, 2025
Two Cheers for the AI Moratorium!
We need to get ahead of this thing. I’ve heard this refrain countless times over the past two years in AI policy circles. But listen closely, and you’ll discover the real message underneath, a quiet admission of past failure: We didn’t move quickly enough when it came to social media and we cannot make the same…
June 16, 2025
The Most Amazing Climate Policy Figure
You’d be hard pressed to find a more fascinating straight line. The figure below is one of the most amazing graphs in all of climate policy.1 It shows the decarbonization of the U.S. economy from 1992 to 20252 — with decarbonization is defined as the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions (from fossil fuels) to GDP (in 2025$). I was…
June 16, 2025
“The Global Fertility Crisis is Worse Than You Think”
The title of today’s post comes from an excellent recent talk in London given by my AEI colleague (and University of Pennsylvania professor), Jesús Fernández-Villaverde. Today I look at the simple math of population projections to clarify the nature of the “crisis” — which is indeed worse than I thought. On X/Twitter, JFV summarized his talk as follows: The…
June 13, 2025
NTIA Streamlines BEAD Program, But Risks Further Delays
On June 6, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) issued its long-awaited overhaul of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. This new policy notice repeals many administrative burdens imposed by Biden-era NTIA oversight and aligns the program more closely with Congress’s original intent. This revised guidance promises to enhance broadband…
June 12, 2025
The Gig Economy Benefits Freelance Workers—Until Regulation Steps In
In recent years, the gig economy has become a lightning rod for political debate. Lawmakers and activists warn that Uber drivers, online freelancers, and other contract workers are trapped in a precarious labor market—competing against one another for jobs, lacking benefits, and excluded from basic workplace protections. California has led efforts to regulate this space,…
June 11, 2025
Whose Experts?
In an op-ed yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced that he was sacking all of its members of “to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.” He explained: [W]e are taking a bold step in restoring public trust by totally reconstituting the Advisory…