July 31, 2025
Data, Security, and Liberty: What’s at Stake in Federal Consolidation?
On July 16, 2025, AEI hosted an expert panel discussing the critical issues surrounding federal data consolidation and the protection of civil liberties in the digital age. The panel featured Courtney Bowman of Palantir Technologies, Alexandra Reeve Givens of the Center for Democracy & Technology, Daniel Werfel, former US Commissioner of the IRS, and Kim…
July 30, 2025
A Red Team Climate Report
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a new assessment of climate science written by five scientists who have long-argued that climate science assessments have overlooked key issues. The report — A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate — was released yesterday accompanying the Trump Administration’s announcement that it was…
July 30, 2025
Letting Tech Companies Assert Their Users’ Online First Amendment Rights Is Vital
It’s increasingly clear how important standing is for asserting online First Amendment speech rights. Last year, the US Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri dismissed on standing grounds the claims of two states and five individuals alleging that multiple Biden administration officials unlawfully pressured and coerced social media platforms “to suppress protected speech in violation…
July 29, 2025
Taxing and/or Licensing Digital Platforms
Earlier this month, the European Commission Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy—Henna Virkkunen—confirmed that the European Union (EU) does not plan to levy fees on Big Tech companies to recover the high costs faced by EU antitrust regulators monitoring and enforcing the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Strong support for such a levy has…
July 29, 2025
The Tea App Breach Shows Why We Can’t Regulate for Openness Without Planning for Security
Last week, a dating safety app called Tea Dating Advice—which allows women to anonymously share dating experiences to keep others safe—was a viral success. It had risen to the top of Apple’s App Store charts and had over 1.6 million users. Just as it appeared poised to become a major tool to advance digital safety,…
July 28, 2025
The Bad Science and Bad Policy at the Heart of the Climate Movement
Few people are aware of the fact that “climate change” means very different things in science and in policy. That difference exposes the fundamental incoherence of climate policy, highlighted by the recent rediscovery that there is more to increasing global temperatures than just greenhouse gas emissions. Remarkably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and…
July 28, 2025
America’s AI Action Plan: What to Watch
The Trump administration’s AI Action Plan outlines bold steps to accelerate innovation and boost US leadership in AI. My recent post highlights some of the needed proposals to cut red tape, streamline permitting, and spur private-sector growth. Yet for all its ambition, the plan overlooks several high-stakes gaps—areas where evolving risks may require more proactive…
July 25, 2025
The AI Action Plan: Securing America’s Future in the Age of Intelligence
The White House released its 2025 AI Action Plan—a 28-page blueprint focused on securing US leadership in artificial intelligence. It’s an executive-led strategy with minimal reliance on Congress, emphasizing rapid deployment and national competitiveness. The plan is organized around three pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international engagement. Each pillar underscores how AI is not just a…
July 24, 2025
Frisbees and Flatulence
Today, The Washington Post and New York Times have both reported that any day now, the Trump administration will publish a proposed rule that reconsiders the 2009 greenhouse gas “endangerment finding” by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In anticipation of the proposed rule’s release, today I highlight five things that everyone should know about the “endangerment finding” so that…
July 24, 2025
Microgrids, Nukes & Novel Tariffs
In July 2024 I wrote a five-part series on data center energy use. Two of those posts focused on the thorny question of how data centers would contract for power in settings where utility regulation and timelines were too slow to enable the data center owner to achieve their desired speed-to-power, and how transaction cost…