Tech Policy Podcast

Noah Smith (Noahpinion Substack) discusses techno-industrial competition with China and Russia.Topics include:American industry: we’re #2 :( Allies: no longer a luxuryNEPA sucksA brief lesson about nickelThe death of state capacity: greatly exaggerated?Will information destroy liberalism?Clowns to the left, clowns to the rightHey, let’s *not* be divided and poorLinks:Noahpinion (Substack)People are realizing that the Arsenal of Democracy is goneHappy fun Cold War 2 updateThree holes in the U.S.’ economic strategy against ChinaHow liberal democracy might lose the 21st centuryLiberalism is losing the information war

Brandon Kirk Williams (Lawrence Livermore) discusses quantum computing—the science behind it, its potential applications, the geopolitics surrounding it, and more.Links:The U.S. Must Win the Quantum Computing Race. History Shows How to Do ItThe U.S. Needs a Strategy for the Second Quantum Revolution

Alice Marwick (UNC-Chapel Hill) discusses her new paper, “Child Online Safety Legislation: A Primer.”If you’re wondering, the article Corbin quotes at the top of the show is Zephyr Teachout, Ending Big Tech’s Child Exploitation (Compact Magazine).Topics include:Moral panic in the technical senseThe Kids Online Safety Act: not about kids, not about safetyOnce more, with feeling: correlation is not causation“Harmful content”: no one knows what it means, but it’s provocativeCare about kids? Center them, not technologyLinks:Child Online Safety Legislation: A PrimerTech Policy Podcast #342: Save the Children (From State Social Media Laws)

Berin Szóka (TechFreedom) and James Dunstan (TechFreedom) discuss the FCC’s recent orders on Title II common-carrier regulation and digital discrimination.Topics include:A hundred years of telecom law in four minutesThe craziest story in the history of federal regulationFCC: Huzzah for crappy Internet (like in Europe)!SCOTUS: Congress must tackle major questions!Disparate treatment vs. disparate impactThe FCC crams an elephant in a mouseholeLinks:Zombie FCC vs. Schoolhouse-Rock Supreme CourtFCC Revives Common Carriage for the InternetTechFreedom’s brief in the digital discrimination litigationTechFreedom’s comments in the FCC’s Title II proceedingNet Neutrality Legislation: A Framework for Consensus

Arnold Kling discusses his recent article in Reason magazine, “Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work.”Topics include:Why central planning is impossibleThe importance of pricesWhat is AI good for?Will AI know us better than we know ourselves?What markets will AI disrupt?Social media and tribal gang-sign flashingThe myopia of the revanchist rightLinks:Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning WorkDavid Brin’s Transparent Society RevisitedMir McLuhanismThe Revanchist RightTech Policy Podcast 368: How the Government Gets Your Data

Renée DiResta (Stanford Internet Observatory) discusses her new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality.Topics include:Social media influencers: the new media eliteHow do ideas take root?Influencers as exploiters of asymmetriesBullshit: an investigationCould platforms have stopped Stop the Steal?Fixing the expert classChomsky’s Manufacturing ConsentThe future of social mediaLinks:Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into RealityInfluencers, Bullshitters, and How We Lost a Shared RealityRenée DiResta at Politics and Prose (DC), June 13Renée DiResta at the Commonwealth Club (SF), June 17The New Media Goliaths (Noema)Agents of Influence newsletterTech Policy Podcast 293: The Supply of Renée DiResta Should Be Infinite

From January 10, 2022 (Episode 309): Joseph Uscinski (University of Miami) argues that the internet is not increasing the prevalence of conspiracy theories.Links:Don’t Blame Social Media for Conspiracy Theories—They Would Still Flourish Without It

Robert Atkinson is president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. He joins the show to discuss his new book, Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths About Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy, co-authored with David Moschella.Topics include:Tech panic: speeding-uppers vs. slowing-downersTech and privacy: try living in an analogue village!The wicked problem of content moderationIs tech progress bad for the middle class?Is tech driving market concentration?“Industrial planning”: dirty words?Links:Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths about Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy

Richard Morrison (Competitive Enterprise Institute) joins the show, in a crossover episode with the Free the Economy podcast.Topics include:The history of podcastsThe rise of micro media (find a thousand true fans!)Performative tech doomerismThe idleness of romanticizing the pastThe quest for online communityConservatives in the TechniumLinks:Free the EconomyWhy Conservatism FailedThe Quest for a Better Online “Community”

It’s the episode you’ve been waiting for: TechFreedom’s Corbin Barthold and Ari Cohn talk about pornography and free expression.Topics include:The Founding Fathers: epic porn fiends (j/k)Obscenity law, a brief historyDo conservatives still want to ban James Joyce?“I know it when I see it”—Worst. Legal standard. Ever.Is there a moral case against porn? (Spoiler alert: No)The Fifth Circuit botches internet speech lawLinks:Tech Policy Podcast #360: Red States vs. Every SCOTUS Internet PrecedentA Reagan Judge, The First Amendment, And The Eternal War Against PornographyTexas Legislature Convinced First Amendment Simply Does Not ExistIs Porn Harmful? The Evidence, the Myths and the Unknowns

Ryan Scirocco is the spacesuit business development lead at Collins Aerospace. Collins, an RTX business, is, along with its partners ILC Dover and Oceaneering, developing a new generation of spacesuits for NASA. Ryan discusses everything that goes into keeping people alive in a freezing zero-gravity vacuum far outside the biosphere.Topics include:A spacesuit is a mini-spaceshipSpace: it wants to kill youSpacesuit historyWhat’s new? No more mirrors!Testing spacesuits on the vomit cometThe ISS, the Moon, and beyondLinks:Collins Aerospace Completes Key Spacesuit Testing MilestoneSpace SymposiumTech Policy Podcast #349: The State of Space Exploration

Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discusses, in exquisite detail, the First Amendment problems with H.R. 7521, the House bill to ban TikTok.Topics include:Your First Amendment right to read crazy shitTikTok ban bros: throwing spaghetti at the wallForeign broadcast-ownership rules: so passé“iT’S nOT sPEech, It’S CoNDuCt”H.R. 7521: Least. Tailored. Law. Ever.Banning media: it’s what the other guys doMcCarthyism: so hot right nowLinks:A Breakdown of the Bizarre Factions Fighting Over the TikTok Ban BillTech Policy Podcast #344: TikTok and the First AmendmentTech Policy Podcast #368: How the Government Gets Your DataTech Policy Podcast #289: The History, Use, and Abuse of the Fairness DoctrineThe only thing Congress can agree on is to ban TikTok!?

Daphne Keller (Stanford Cyber Policy Center) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discuss the Supreme Court oral argument in Murthy v. Missouri (government jawboning of social media platforms) and the NetChoice cases (state content moderation laws).Links:Six Things About JawboningThe Lies the 5th Circuit Told You About the Government ‘Pressuring Social Media to Censor’Tech Policy Podcast #350: When the Government Yells at Social MediaFAQs About the NetChoice Cases at the Supreme Court, Part 1FAQs About the NetChoice Cases at the Supreme Court, Part 2The Long Reach of Taamneh: Carriage and Removal Requirements for Internet PlatformsGod Help Us, but Brett Kavanaugh Could Save the First Amendment‘Orwellian’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Samuel Hammond (Foundation for American Innovation) discusses his essays on “AI and Leviathan.” Can government institutions cope with the coming technological disruption of AI?Topics include:- AI’s trajectory- New Deal agencies in an AI world- Public Choice Theory vs. the AI juggernaut- Uber and micro-regime changes- Government as a network of smart contracts- Techno-totalitarianism vs. techno-feudalism- AI Renaissance city states?- Collapse as a feature, not a bug- A techno-optimist’s revealed preferencesLinks:AI and Leviathan: Part IAI and Leviathan: Part IIAI and Leviathan: Part IIIWhere is This All Heading?AI: Dumb human to Einstein in a heartbeatTech Policy Podcast #337: China and Domestic SurveillanceTech Policy Podcast #327: The Collapse of Complex Societies

Byron Tau (NOTUS) discusses his new book Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State.Topics include:Some history: four generations of data brokersThe continuing evolution of data collection and technological surveillanceThe great danger: data fusion / comprehensive data profilesWhy won’t Congress regulate government data use?National security vs. privacyShould we fear a social credit system?Links:Means of ControlNOTUSX: @ByronTauTech Policy Podcast #337: China and Domestic Surveillance

Brandon Gorrell (Pirate Wires) joins the show to discuss The White Pill, his optimistic (and mind-blowing) newsletter covering “the frontiers of tech, science, space, and more.”Topics include: Combatting the overwhelming negativity on social media. Lasers are amazing.Why space exploration?Did the Big Bang really happen?The Pirate Wires brand — beautiful vibe!Breaking the New York Times / NPR decel monoculture.Advances in IVF.Links:The White Pill

It’s a big picture episode! One day (soon?), technology will enable convenient, low-cost gender transition. What does that say about human “nature”? What are the implications for society? What are (some) people getting so upset about? Jason Kuznicki (TechFreedom) joins the show to discuss.Gender as Essence and as Economic ChoiceCosmos + Taxis issue on gender (including articles by Nathan P. Goodman and by Akiva Malamet and Mikayla Novak)Pacification (Jason’s Substack)Tech Policy Podcast #327: The Collapse of Complex Societies (2022 Big Picture Episode)Tech Policy Podcast #301: The Realignment (2021 Big Picture Episode)

Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Leigh Beadon (Techdirt) join the show to discuss their new report on the Internet’s (beneficial!) effect on art, entertainment, and culture.The Sky Is Rising: 2024 EditionRather than Destroying Culture, the Internet Has Saved the Content IndustriesFilterworld Is a Confused Critique of Algorithms

Liza Goitein (Brennan Center) joins the show to discuss the FISA Section 702 surveillance program. Why is it so contentious? Why is it such a hot topic now? Why and how should it be changed? And what does the Fourth Amendment have to say about it? Liza explains!Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): A Resource PageHow Congress Learned to Live with Warrantless Surveillance (for Now)Tech Policy Podcast #339: Will Tech Swallow the Fourth Amendment?

TechFreedom’s Ari Cohn and Corbin Barthold discuss whether AI is going to spark an “infocalypse,” bring about the “collapse of reality,” and destroy our elections. Is AI about to “flood” our “screens” with “misinformation” that’s “dangerous to democracy”? Notwithstanding these quotes from recent press stories, the answer is probably no.Ari’s Senate testimonyWhat the Doomsayers Get Wrong About DeepfakesScott Brennen + Matt Perault paperTech Policy Podcast #358: Information Animals Fighting Information WarsTech Policy Podcast #359: Your Right to Lie — With Jeff Kosseff