Commencement Advice: A Letter for What Comes Next
The AEI commencement essay warns that graduates are leaving a campus bubble into a world lacking institutional scaffolding. It highlights a historic decline in American civic participation—fewer churchgoers, volunteers, and neighborhood ties—threatening the social infrastructure of democracy. The author urges new graduates to rebuild that fabric by joining local groups, forming families, reading deeply, and mastering civil disagreement. The piece frames these habits as essential "muscles" for turning strangers into citizens.
America’s AI Rules Are Being Written in Courtrooms
U.S. courts are emerging as the primary arena for shaping AI governance, filling the gap left by limited federal and state legislation. Judges are applying existing legal doctrines to AI, holding humans and companies accountable in cases ranging from employment...
Storm Clouds over the European Economy
The European economy faces a perfect storm of an Iranian‑driven oil and fertilizer price shock, a 25% U.S. tariff on European automobiles, and tightening monetary policy by the ECB. Growth has stalled to 0.1% in Q1 2024 after a modest...
Iran’s Threat to the World Economy
Iran has seized effective control of Strait of Hormuz traffic while the United States has responded with a naval blockade aimed at stopping Iranian oil exports. Both sides believe they hold the upper hand, creating a dangerous stalemate that could...
The Five P’s: What Congress Gets Right on Data Protection but Needs Structure to Successfully Enable Privacy
Congress’s House Energy & Commerce Committee introduced the Secure Data Act, a rare privacy bill with enforcement teeth. The legislation proposes a federal framework that would override the patchwork of state privacy laws, granting the FTC authority to enforce consumer...
Solving the Mystery of How Businesses Are Using AI
New research from the NBER shows that firms investing in artificial intelligence grow faster and enjoy higher market valuations, but aggregate productivity gains remain modest. Adoption is uneven, favoring larger companies and those with more high‑skill workers. Early AI tools...
Public Schools and Social Media Addiction: Billions at Stake as Groundbreaking Trial Starts in June
A federal multi‑district litigation (MDL) in Oakland will feature the first bellwether trial of public school districts suing Meta, TikTok, Snap and Google for alleged social‑media addiction among minors. The case, filed by Breathitt County, Kentucky, begins jury selection on...
Closing the US-China Military Balance of Power Gap in the Pacific
The Pentagon’s FY 2027 defense budget request totals $1.5 trillion, aiming to raise U.S. defense spending to 4.5% of GDP. The plan focuses on rebuilding the industrial base, expanding missile, ship and aircraft production, and accelerating munitions output. By 2030, the funding...
Chairman Smith Is Right About the Need for a Site-Neutral Policy in Medicare
Chairman Jason Smith criticized hospital executives for blocking a site‑neutral Medicare payment reform that would align outpatient rates across settings. The Congressional Budget Office estimates a full site‑neutral policy could save about $157 billion over ten years and lower Part B premiums...
Loosening Bank Capital Rules Won’t Bring Banks Back to Mortgage Lending
Bank participation in U.S. mortgage origination has fallen from roughly 60% in 2008 to 35% in 2023, while non‑bank lenders have surged. Proposals to ease Basel III capital requirements, championed by Fed Vice Chair Michelle Bowman, assume tighter capital rules...
Our AI Race with China: The Good News
The United States and China are locked in a fast‑moving AI rivalry, with Chinese models narrowing the performance gap and occasionally leveraging stolen U.S. technology. In April, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party held a hearing that...
Estimating Wartime Damage to US Military Bases in the Middle East as Part of Operation Epic Fury
Iranian forces damaged eleven U.S. bases across seven Middle Eastern nations during the early phase of Operation Epic Fury, injuring roughly 70 structures. The analyst‑derived cost estimate reaches about $5 billion, factoring direct repairs, engineering overhead, debris clearance and a 30 percent...
The Poison(ing) of Purchasing Power Parity
The article argues that purchasing power parity (PPP) is frequently misapplied beyond its original scope of consumer‑goods pricing, leading to distorted economic comparisons. It highlights how exchange‑rate volatility, closed markets, and poor price measurement undermine PPP’s reliability, especially for large...
The US Department of Education Just Finalized Its AI in Education Priority. Here’s What It Means.
On April 13, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education issued its final supplemental priority titled “Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education,” establishing a policy framework that will steer discretionary grant dollars toward AI‑related initiatives in K‑12 and higher education. The priority,...
Outdated Prison Infrastructure Presents Unique Opportunity for BEAD Non-Deployment Funds
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth’s “Benefit of the Bargain” reforms stripped unnecessary conditions from the BEAD broadband grant program, generating roughly $22 billion in saved deployment costs. The statute allows unspent BEAD funds to be redirected toward related goals, and pending guidance...
Hints of AI-Powered Efficiency Gains
Morgan Stanley’s latest research finds that AI‑exposed sectors lifted U.S. labor productivity by roughly 1.7 percentage points in 2025, while overall job growth remained steady and unemployment rose only 0.1 percentage point. The gains are concentrated in high‑investment industries such...
Training for the Wrong Job
Startup BAND secured $17 million in seed funding to launch a universal orchestrator that routes, permissions, and audits interactions among autonomous AI agents. The platform aims to prevent conflicts and runaway compute costs, essentially providing a governance layer for multi‑agent AI...
EU’s Social Media Age-Gating Still Avoids User Accountability
On April 16 the European Commission unveiled an open‑source age‑verification app designed to help platforms meet Digital Services Act obligations while preserving user privacy. The tool lets users prove their age with official IDs or trusted third‑party sources, then discards...
Wall Street Sees a Modest AI Tailwind, Not a Jobs Apocalypse
Wall Street economists, led by Goldman Sachs, see artificial intelligence as a modest productivity boost rather than a catalyst for mass job loss. The bank projects US potential output growing at 2.3% in 2025, with productivity rising about 2% annually,...
How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Work for Americans with Disabilities
Americans with disabilities face unemployment rates twice the national average, and the ADA may have unintentionally discouraged hiring. Artificial intelligence promises to lower functional barriers through tools for visual, hearing, mobility, and cognitive impairments, yet the same technology can embed...
Science Inadvertently Exposes the Paris/Net-Zero Fraud
A new *Science* paper examined 1,500 climate policies enacted between 1998 and 2022 and identified only 63 that delivered what the authors label “large” emissions cuts, amounting to 0.6‑1.8 billion metric tonnes of CO₂ – roughly 0.18% of total global emissions...
AI’s Power Hunger Has a Price—Just Not a Ruinous One Given the Upsides
Artificial intelligence data centers now consume roughly five to six percent of U.S. electricity—about 250 terawatt‑hours annually—creating roughly $25 billion in annual pollution damages. That cost represents about five percent of the sector’s $500 billion output and only 1‑2 percent of the...
Parents or States: Who Should Decide How Much Social Media Time Is Too Much?
In February, a federal judge blocked Virginia's law that limits minors to one hour of social‑media use per day unless a parent provides verifiable consent. The decision held that parents, not the state, should set initial usage limits, citing First...
AI Competition with China Continues to Heat Up
The U.S. House Select Committee highlighted a $2.5 billion AI‑chip smuggling case, labeling Chinese illicit procurement a national‑security threat. Experts testified that compute power and proprietary models are the decisive factors in the AI race, with China now only 2.7 percent behind...
The ROI of Beating Cancer
A small early‑stage trial showed that a personalized mRNA vaccine triggered an immune response and extended survival for pancreatic cancer patients, a disease that kills over 90% within five years. Economists estimate that between 1988 and 2000, cancer detection and...
The US Takes the Easy Road on China
The article argues that the United States is taking an overly soft stance toward China, concentrating on politically popular issues like Chinese land ownership while neglecting deeper strategic vulnerabilities. Recent Section 232 investigations into pharmaceuticals and semiconductors have produced limited...
Anthropic’s Project Glasswing Is a Warning: Technical Debt Is Now a National Security Risk
Anthropic unveiled Project Glasswing, an AI model named Claude Mythos that can autonomously discover and chain high‑severity software vulnerabilities. The rapid rollout sparked urgent discussions among the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and major banks about the fragility of legacy...
Is “Safety by Design” Ever Feasible in an Uncertain World?
The Australian eSafety Commissioner released its first evaluation of the Social Media Minimum Age law, highlighting the “Safety by Design” (SbD) framework that obliges platforms to embed age‑verification and harm‑prevention features before launch. SbD rests on three pillars—service provider responsibility,...
America’s Productivity Pop Has a Startup Backstory
U.S. labor productivity has edged up, marking the strongest post‑Great‑Financial‑Crisis gain, but analysts caution the metric’s volatility and the fact that higher output per worker can stem from workforce composition shifts. The recent surge in business‑formation applications—up roughly 20% over...
Can Cryptocurrency Go Mainstream?
Stablecoins are emerging as the backbone of global money movement, with Polygon Labs positioning its network as a unified on‑chain payment layer. Recent U.S. legislation, notably the Genius Act, has reduced regulatory uncertainty, allowing stablecoin usage to surge—Polygon reported a...
Babies Beget Babies. That’s Both a Problem and a Policy Lesson.
The new NBER paper finds that exposure to babies increases the desire for children, creating a self‑reinforcing loop that may explain about 13% of the recent fertility decline. Economists argue that policies such as child subsidies, affordable housing, and better...
Caps on Graduate Student Lending: How Did We Get Here?
The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) enacted in summer 2025 imposes the first federal caps on graduate student loans, ending the near‑unlimited Grad PLUS program created in 2006. The caps respond to mounting fiscal losses, political pressure over loan‑forgiveness, and concerns...
Of Free Speech Claims and Supply Chain Risks: Anthropic’s Battle with the Government
Anthropic sued the U.S. Department of War, alleging retaliation for publicly opposing the deployment of its Claude Gov model in mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. A San Francisco district judge granted a preliminary injunction, finding the DoW’s punitive labeling of Anthropic...
Bring Back Wonder: Why Artemis II Still Matters
Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed flight beyond low‑Earth orbit, is more than a technical rehearsal. While it will validate Orion’s life‑support and propulsion systems for a future lunar landing, the mission also seeks to rekindle the public’s sense of awe that...
Current Uses and Unmet Needs of Federal Economic Statistics
The Brookings Institution’s Economic Indicators Initiative released a paper outlining current uses and gaps in the Federal Statistical System (FSS). The system, which costs less than 0.1% of the federal budget, fuels Social Security inflation adjustments, retail inventory decisions, and...
The Need for Federal Reserve Flexibility
The article argues that the Federal Reserve must stay agile as geopolitical shocks and soaring energy and fertilizer prices threaten to reignite inflation. It warns that the Fed’s overly accommodative stance in 2021‑22 helped push inflation to a 9% peak,...
America Needs a Bigger Pie, Not Just Bigger Slices
The Congressional Budget Office projects U.S. labor‑force growth to shrink from 0.9% annually to just 0.1% by mid‑century, dragging potential GDP growth below 2% this decade. With fewer workers, productivity becomes the sole engine of economic expansion, a shift highlighted...
FHA Premium Cuts Move Market Shares, Not the Affordability Needle
The Federal Housing Administration’s recent mortgage‑insurance‑premium (MIP) reductions have not lowered overall housing costs but have instead shifted market share from GSE‑backed loans to FHA. Empirical analysis shows a 2.5‑point boost in price appreciation in neighborhoods with high FHA presence...
Epic Fury Costs as of the April 8 Cease Fire
Operation Epic Fury, now entering a two‑week cease‑fire, has incurred an estimated incremental cost of $25‑35 billion through April 8, 2026. The figure is derived from publicly available Pentagon and CENTCOM data on deployed ships, aircraft, munitions expended and aircraft losses, plus...
If Schools Won’t Form Boys, Social Media Will
College students arrive with much of their masculine identity already formed, leaving schools to merely refine judgment. A growing number of boys, feeling lonely and purposeless, are turning to the online "manosphere" for scripts on what it means to be...
AI’s Job Ledger Has Two Columns
Economists are shifting from dismissing AI‑driven job loss to acknowledging early signs of disruption. Data from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs suggest AI exposure has nudged unemployment up by about 0.3 percentage points and trimmed payroll growth by roughly 25,000...
The Trump Administration’s Anti-Waste in Health Care Campaign
The Trump administration is accelerating its anti‑waste drive in Medicare and Medicaid by deploying artificial‑intelligence tools and targeted investigations. CMS has launched the WISeR model to embed AI‑driven prior authorization, issued a six‑month moratorium on new durable medical equipment vendors,...
Redeem the Time: A Better Way to Think About College
A widely circulated University of Austin letter warns that elite colleges have become breeding grounds for grade inflation and intellectual passivity, noting that over 60% of Harvard undergraduates now receive A’s. The piece argues that students drift through coursework, relying...
France’s Strait of Hormuz Problem
France, the Eurozone’s second‑largest economy, is confronting a fiscal shock as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven oil, gas and fertilizer prices up by roughly 60% and 50% respectively. Already running a budget deficit above five percent...
Purge at the Pentagon: Politicization or Business as Usual?
In early 2025 the Trump administration dismissed 21 senior flag officers, including the Joint Chiefs chairman and top service lawyers, sparking a wave of concern over politicized personnel moves. An analysis of the replacements shows that, in most cases, successors...
To Lead in Tech, Congress May Need to Lead Less—And Rethink the FCC
Congress is debating a rewrite of the Communications Act, sparking debate over the future role of the Federal Communications Commission. Critics argue the FCC, created for monopoly telephone and broadcast spectrum oversight, is outdated in a fragmented digital economy where...
The AI Jobs Scare Meets 250 Years of Data
Morgan Stanley’s new study compares five historic innovation waves—canals, railroads, electrification, post‑war electronics, and the internet—to today’s AI surge, finding that each wave eventually spurred productivity gains after an initial disruption. The analysis notes that AI’s early labor market impact...
Sony Loss Strengthens Sony Standard in Cox ISP Copyright Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a $1 billion copyright verdict that Sony Music had won against broadband provider Cox Communications. The Court held that contributory liability attaches only when a service is intended or tailored for infringement, reaffirming the 1984...
How Much Should Government Try to Shape the Digital Economy?
Congress is weighing a rewrite of the Communications Act, prompting a philosophical debate over how far government should steer the digital economy. A recent House Energy and Commerce hearing highlighted divergent views on universal service subsidies, broadband regulation, and content...
Congress Takes Up an Old Problem: Writing Laws for a Future It Can’t See
Congress is revisiting the 1996 Communications Act, recognizing that its landline‑centric framework no longer fits broadband, 5G, streaming and satellite services. Lawmakers face pressure from national‑security concerns, the erosion of the Universal Service Fund, and renewed scrutiny of Section 230....