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?
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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?
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?
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 effort now folded into the personnel office and other agencies rather than operating as a standalone body, how should the work be made permanent rather than becoming another audit that gets filed?
Long Island, NY Correspondent — The vehicle was always the wrong shape for the mission, and its absorption this autumn is the proof. An entity created by executive order, staffed with temporary employees, with no statutory authority to compel anything, was going to end when attention moved. It did. If the work is to be … Continue reading With the effort now folded into the personnel office and other agencies rather than operating as a standalone body, how should the work be made permanent rather than becoming another audit that gets filed?
Did the government efficiency effort identify genuine waste and fraud in federal programs, and what has it established that a future administration cannot ignore?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — It established something that badly needed establishing, which is that nobody in Washington could tell you where the money went. Not that it was stolen. That nobody could produce a list. The government's own auditors put improper payments at something like a hundred and sixty billion a year, and cumulatively somewhere … Continue reading Did the government efficiency effort identify genuine waste and fraud in federal programs, and what has it established that a future administration cannot ignore?
Did the political realignment produce more functional governance, or new forms of polarization?
Wheeling, WV Correspondent — Realignment can create clearer coalitions and coherent majorities. It can also rearrange the same conflict into new lines. We now have a year of evidence and it's not encouraging on the functional half. Unified control produced one large bill and then a forty-three-day shutdown, the longest ever recorded, resolved by an … Continue reading Did the political realignment produce more functional governance, or new forms of polarization?
Should the United States maintain its current network of security commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, or begin a more explicit process of prioritization?
Dayton, OH Correspondent — Commitments exceed comfortable capacity measured against simultaneous requirements in multiple theatres. The production numbers are still the argument. Artillery expansion took three years to approach the consumption rate of a single conflict, and the interceptor stocks used in the Middle East this year are on multi-year replacement schedules. Prioritisation is recognition … Continue reading Should the United States maintain its current network of security commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, or begin a more explicit process of prioritization?
How can the administrative state be made more responsive to elected officials without introducing new forms of politicization into technical decisions?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — Responsiveness requires clearer statutory direction, stronger oversight of policy priorities, and consequences for refusing to implement lawful policy. The risk is that technical judgments become subordinated to preference. The workable separation is elected control of ends with integrity in means. What makes this question unusually live is that it may … Continue reading How can the administrative state be made more responsive to elected officials without introducing new forms of politicization into technical decisions?
Is the current trajectory of federal debt and interest costs compatible with sustained economic growth and long-term geopolitical leadership?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Rising interest costs reduce fiscal space for investment, defence, and future emergencies. Net interest passed a trillion dollars this year and exceeds defence spending. That's not a projection anymore. Sustained growth is still possible. The trajectory makes it harder and raises the odds of an eventual adjustment that itself slows growth. … Continue reading Is the current trajectory of federal debt and interest costs compatible with sustained economic growth and long-term geopolitical leadership?
