Commentary

How Gamers Eclipsed Spies as an Intelligence Threat

April 17, 2023 | Jon Askonas

This piece was originally published in Foreign Policy. The recent leaks of classified U.S. military documents on the Russian-Ukrainian war count among the worst Western intelligence failures in recent history. Veteran intelligence officials, however, are shocked for a different reason: The particular way the top-secret documents spread—and the apparent motivation for the leaker. The information

April 13, 2023 | Aaron Ginn

This piece was originally published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priority for the legislative session is to give families more freedom to choose the right school for their children. Abbott has called for lawmakers to establish education savings accounts to give parents direct control of their child’s share of school funding.

April 13, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Imagine posting content to Facebook or Twitter critical of the federal government, only to have agents knocking on your door a few days later, demanding your computer, and claim that you helped promote a foreign narrative. The officials come armed only with subpoenas, not warrants, and you

April 13, 2023 | Geoff Cain

This piece was originally published in Persuasion. In 2017, I was in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang, investigating how China had erected the most sophisticated surveillance state ever with the help of tech companies from both China and America. An estimated 1.8 million people, mostly Muslim Uyghurs, would be hauled away for such thought crimes as

March 28, 2023 | Roslyn Layton

This piece was originally published in RealClearMarkets. The failure of tech-heavy Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the initial uncertainty over its causes led to public fear of contagion to other banks simply because of the raw numbers — $212 billion in assets, including the high-dollar deposits of some of the most prominent tech start-ups. But

March 28, 2023 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Last week, Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced the Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from Foreign Harm Act of 2023, marking an important step in keeping U.S. farmland safe from malign foreign influence by reforming how the United states tracks foreign investment in agriculture. The law would reform

March 21, 2023 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in CoinTelegraph. With public trust in large tech companies at an all-time low, Congress is once again considering comprehensive data privacy legislation. But the rise of blockchain technologies and the nascent decentralized web mean that these comprehensive proposals are already behind the times. Without major revisions, these legislative proposals risk strangling decentralizing

March 15, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

This piece was originally published in the Washington Times. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently grilled Attorney General Merrick Garland over a wide range of issues, including the FBI’s targeting of traditional Catholics and the treatment of pro-life activists, while ignoring violence against crisis pregnancy centers. Likewise, the House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

March 14, 2023 | Jimmy Soni

This piece was originally published in The Dispatch. On an SAT answer bubble, a single vertical mark through a letter counts as a response. Why does that matter? Because drawing a short line requires two fewer seconds than shading a full bubble. Across dozens of questions, that’s precious minutes saved. I absorbed this piece of testing

March 8, 2023 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in Tech Policy Press. From education to media to medicine, the rapid development of artificial intelligence tools has already begun to upend long-established conventions. Our democratic institutions will be no exception. It’s therefore crucial that we think about how to build AI systems in a way that democratically distributes the benefits.

March 3, 2023 | Satya Thallam

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Early last year, an FDA advisory committee rejected a new lung cancer drug. The reason? They weren’t too keen on foreign clinical data. Later in the year, the developer of a potential variant-proof COVID-19 treatment that might even be effective against other viruses faced the same problem. The FDA rejected

February 15, 2023 | Alex Dubin

This piece was originally published in the National Interest. The liftoff of Artemis 1 last November launched a new era in space, as the United States prepares to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit and back to the Moon for the first time in half a century. The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule finally made their debut

February 15, 2023 | Brandon Detweiler

This piece was originally published in reimaginED. In 2023, Iowa and Utah have already enacted new education savings account programs that will help thousands of families take control of their children’s education. These states follow Arizona and West Virginia in enacting broadly available ESA programs in recent years. There’s more to come. According to EdChoice, lawmakers in

February 14, 2023 | Richard Reisman

This piece was originally published in Tech Policy Press. Managing society’s problems related to how (and by whom) social media news feeds are composed is rapidly reducing to the absurd. Elon Musk’s capricious management of Twitter highlights many of the core elements of the presenting problems – while related issues have risen to the Supreme Court.

February 8, 2023 | Zach Graves

This piece was originally published in Tech Policy Press. In the last year, we’ve seen huge improvements in the quality and range of generative AI tools—including voice-to-text applications like OpenAI’s Whisper, text-to-voice generators like Murf, text-to-image models like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-3, and others. Unlike the clunky AI tools of the past (sorry, Clippy), this suite of

February 8, 2023 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in the Deseret News. House Republicans had a rough start to the new year, with internal squabbles delaying the instatement of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Now, Republicans have to find a rallying point — otherwise, they risk wasting the next two years. Thankfully, one proposal provides a clear path toward

January 30, 2023 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in Tablet. Federal funds are being used to buy drones and drone detection equipment from DJI, a Chinese drone company that maintains control over data created and compiled by their products. Some of the details of these drone acquisitions were buried on government websites, while other aspects of these programs

Between Sovereignty and the IMF

January 26, 2023 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in Commonweal. Across the world, countries in dire financial straits are giving up economic sovereignty in exchange for emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sri Lanka, for example, reached a deal with the IMF to restore economic stability after it ran out of fuel and other essentials earlier this year due

These Are Not Your Drones

January 25, 2023 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in the American Mind. A growing concern in debates over U.S.-China competition and decoupling has been the U.S. usage of Chinese drones. Drones made in China by Chinese companies have been used by federal agencies for tasks ranging from fighting fires to agricultural research and by the FBI and Secret Service for security purposes. As

January 17, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

This piece was originally published in The Hill. The Federal Trade Commission recently proposed a rule that would ban non-compete clauses in employment contracts. While the Commission’s attempt to ban them raises important questions about the continued use of NCAs, its assertion of authority will be challenged and is unlikely to survive judicial review. The FTC’s proposal is simple to

4,800 Ways to Improve Government

January 4, 2023 | Robert Bellafiore

This piece was originally published in The Hill. As the 118th Congress begins, Americans may be wondering what, if anything, the legislative branch will accomplish in 2023. For a dose of optimism, they should look to the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act, which included a bipartisan measure providing a blueprint for good government reforms in

Venture Capital Turns on the Elites

December 29, 2022 | Robert Bellafiore

This piece was originally published in National Review. This March will mark 36 years since the publication of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. Since then, we’ve never lacked for laments over the decline of higher education, from Roger Kimball’s Tenured Radicals to William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep. But a nagging fact accompanies these and other powerful indictments: Higher education

The Long Delay Is Nearly Over

December 28, 2022 | Alex Dubin

This piece was originally published in the New Atlantis. George Jetson is alive. No, not literally, of course. But in the world of the famous 1960s TV series, set in 2062, George Jetson was forty years old. This means that the Jetson patriarch was born in 2022. For people of a certain age, this is depressing news.

December 21, 2022 | Richard Reisman

This piece was originally published in Tech Policy Press. Poor performance at Meta and Twitter’s self-destruction remind us that the dustbin of online history is littered with once dominant platforms. Many see this as akin to the extinction of dinosaurs, to be replaced with smaller, more nimble mammals, like the Mastodon. Yet, as David Carroll and Alex Tarkowski each observe in Tech Policy Press,

December 19, 2022 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Congress’s frustration with the cryptocurrency industry was on full display last week when the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing to investigate the collapse of FTX. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are fed up with fraud and malfeasance among crypto companies, making it all but

December 8, 2022 | Dan Lips

This piece was originally published in the SCIF, the blog of the National Security Institute. Last month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced that he would create a new select committee on China should he be elected Speaker in the 118th Congress, and this morning, announced that Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) will chair the new panel. His

December 2, 2022 | Dan Lips

This piece was originally published in National Review. With Republicans set to control the House of Representatives in 2023, President Biden will no longer be able to count on passing large legislative packages to achieve his policy aims. If he continues the practices of his predecessors for decades, that will mean an increased reliance on

December 1, 2022 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in the Wall Street Journal. In one of the latest moves in the U.S.-China great-power competition, the Defense Department revealed in October that DJI, a Chinese drone company, is on its “Chinese military companies” list, which tracks companies working with the People’s Liberation Army. This reflects a growing, and justified, concern with

November 29, 2022 | Evan Swarztrauber

This piece was originally published in Multichannel News. Ever since the Titanic sank, the U.S. government has regulated the airwaves within its borders. After the Titanic’s distress signal was drowned out by amateur radio operators, Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912, putting an end to the era of a “cacophony of competing voices, none of

November 29, 2022 | Dan Lips

This piece was originally published in the Federalist Society blog. In the recent election, Americans elected a narrowly divided Congress. That means that lawmakers will need to work together on bipartisan legislation if they want to address the nation’s challenges. With the highest inflation in 40 years and ballooning federal debt payments, lawmakers have a responsibility

November 21, 2022 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in Cointelegraph. On Nov. 11, while the rest of the country was celebrating Veteran’s Day, Sam Bankman-Fried announced that FTX — one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by volume — had filed for bankruptcy. Lawmakers and pundits quickly latched onto the rapid disintegration of FTX to call for more regulation

November 16, 2022 | Geoff Cain

This piece was originally published in The Free Press. The midterm elections of 2022 were many things—a shocker for Republicans, the possible end of Donald Trump, a win for centrist Democrats. Overlooked is the fact that they were also a big turning point for TikTok, the Chinese social-media platform. TikTok is not only the most trafficked

November 16, 2022 | Geoff Cain

This piece was originally published in the Wall Street Journal. On Feb. 22, 2019, a man calling himself Matthew Chao knocked on the door of the North Korean embassy in Madrid, with a gift for the embassy’s highest-ranking official. The North Korean worker who answered the door escorted the visitor inside and went to fetch

The Future of Twitter is Open, or Bust

November 7, 2022 | Richard Reisman

This piece was originally published in Tech Policy Press. Elon Musk owns Twitter. Or rather, whatever is left of it after today’s massive layoffs. It’s hard to see any future for the company at this point, particularly as its twin challenges of content moderation and revenue sustainability are deeply intertwined. As a business, Twitter is facing substantial financial obstacles,

November 4, 2022 | Jon Askonas

This piece was originally published in UnHerd. Elon Musk has promised that Twitter’s lords and peasants system (i.e. verification) will be coming to an end. The new CEO said that verified “bluecheck” users would now be subject to a monthly fee of $8. Discussion of the proposal exploded with (broadly) media-adjacent people saying that the changes would effectively destroy Twitter and (broadly)

October 28, 2022 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in The Hill. In August 2022, thanks to an investigation by the Daily Beast, a University of Maryland, College Park professor was revealed to have received a six-figure grant from Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, to build surveillance software. This would be concerning enough, but to make matters worse, the professor was

October 18, 2022 | Dan Lips

This piece was originally published in the SCIF, the blog of the National Security Institute. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, signed into law earlier this year, creates a new reporting regime for American colleges and universities, requiring them to disclose contributions from foreign sources to the National Science Foundation (NSF) if they also receive

October 14, 2022 | Ariel Deschapell

This piece was originally published in Bitcoin Magazine. The idea that Bitcoin lacks innovation compared to other cryptocurrencies is pervasive, but is it true? The Bitcoin protocol undergoes significant changes much more slowly than other cryptocurrencies, the latest, of course, being the implementation and activation of Taproot. But this is a feature, not a bug. As the foundation

October 14, 2022 | Geoff Cain

This piece was originally published in the Wall Street Journal. After many grueling nights designing and building a car in “makeshift tents,” Elon Musk emerged with a prescient lesson for Tesla. “The issue is not about coming up with a car design—it’s absolutely about the production system,” Mr. Musk said in 2019, during the unveiling

October 11, 2022 | Mike Wacker

This piece was originally published in the Burner Files. In a line from the cartoon Futurama that later became a viral meme, Hermes won a promotion to a grade 37 bureaucrat for uncovering a form that had been incorrectly stamped only four times. The head bureaucrat said, “You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.” When it comes