Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — Open systems increase access to evidence and to coordinated deception at the same time. Societies cannot abandon openness without losing the corrective power of free criticism, and cannot ignore the scale at which engineered content now travels. The balance is transparency about amplification, friction for coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and better … Continue reading How should democratic societies balance the benefits of open information systems against their capacity to amplify both accurate analysis and sophisticated manipulation?
Champagne Summits
How should election administrators treat synthetic audio and video in the midterms — platform takedown duties, labeling rules, or a ban that cannot be enforced?
Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent — Administrators should stay close to the part of the problem they can legitimately own: the integrity of the voting process. A clip that falsely changes polling hours, invents a location, impersonates an official, or fabricates a concession is different from a parody or an ordinary campaign lie. The first interferes with … Continue reading How should election administrators treat synthetic audio and video in the midterms — platform takedown duties, labeling rules, or a ban that cannot be enforced?
How should the United States respond to the continuing evolution of artificial intelligence now that early regulatory frameworks are being tested in practice?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — Early frameworks are meeting the gap between paper rules and fast-moving systems, which is what everybody predicted and few prepared for. Stay focused on high-risk applications — safety-critical uses, systemic financial and infrastructure exposure, election tools — rather than licensing every model. Keep the transparency and liability requirements that prove … Continue reading How should the United States respond to the continuing evolution of artificial intelligence now that early regulatory frameworks are being tested in practice?
Should federal science-funding agencies apply viewpoint-neutrality and replication standards to grant portfolios, or would that become a new political test dressed as method?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — This stopped being hypothetical four weeks ago and the timing matters. Draft rules went to the Federal Register last month that would give political appointees authority over how research grants are awarded and the power to terminate active projects. That is not a replication standard. That is the political test … Continue reading Should federal science-funding agencies apply viewpoint-neutrality and replication standards to grant portfolios, or would that become a new political test dressed as method?
With Humphrey’s Executor overruled last week and the Federal Reserve expressly carved out, what remains of the independent agency, and is that the accountability people wanted?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — The decision is five days old and it answers a question this forum has been arguing about for three years. The holding is clean: a subordinate exercising the President's power is removable by him, and Congress cannot require cause. The Court said what is left of the 1935 case is … Continue reading With Humphrey’s Executor overruled last week and the Federal Reserve expressly carved out, what remains of the independent agency, and is that the accountability people wanted?
Is the current combination of fiscal policy, monetary conditions, and debt levels sustainable through the next economic downturn?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Debt is high, interest claims a growing share, and the deficits are running in what is nominally a non-recession environment. The complication this year is that the environment stopped being clearly non-recessionary. Growth in the final quarter of last year came in near half a percent, dragged down by a six-week … Continue reading Is the current combination of fiscal policy, monetary conditions, and debt levels sustainable through the next economic downturn?
Has the realignment of global trade and investment reduced or increased American strategic vulnerability?
Dayton, OH Correspondent — We just ran the experiment and it wasn't the one anybody designed. Four years of arguing about diversifying away from a single adversarial source, and the thing that actually stopped global supply this year was a strait nobody had reshored anything through. That's the finding. We hardened one dependency and the … Continue reading Has the realignment of global trade and investment reduced or increased American strategic vulnerability?
With the emergency tariffs struck down in February and replaced under a narrower authority that expires by its own terms, does trade policy now have to go through Congress?
Novi, MI Correspondent — Yes, and the industry has been saying so since 2025 for reasons that had nothing to do with who was president. You cannot make a capital decision against a tariff that a court can vacate. That was the argument, it was correct, and February proved it in the most expensive possible … Continue reading With the emergency tariffs struck down in February and replaced under a narrower authority that expires by its own terms, does trade policy now have to go through Congress?
Four months into the war with Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz still contested and a cessation of attacks six days old, what should the United States be trying to achieve now?
Jacksonville, FL Correspondent — A port has watched this from the first week and I'd start with what actually happened to the water. About a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a fifth of its liquefied gas moved through that strait before February. It has been largely closed since, and what reopened it partially … Continue reading Four months into the war with Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz still contested and a cessation of attacks six days old, what should the United States be trying to achieve now?
With the midterms four months away, should the administration be judged primarily on enacted statutes or on enforcement metrics that a successor can reverse?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — This question got answered twice this year by the Supreme Court, and the answer was statutes. In February the Court held the emergency tariffs were never authorized, and the signature economic policy of the term evaporated in four days. Last week it held that commissioners at independent agencies serve at will, … Continue reading With the midterms four months away, should the administration be judged primarily on enacted statutes or on enforcement metrics that a successor can reverse?
