Tech Policy Podcast

Jonathan Adler (Case Western Law) and Ari Cohn (FIRE) discuss the FDA’s war on vaping and the Supreme Court case FDA v. Wages and White Lion Investments . Topics include: The (comparative) health case for vaping Yet another moral panic Kids take risks! The bungling FDA A disappointing oral argument Fine points of administrative law Will the Trump admin switch course? Links: En Banc Fifth Circuit R...

Samantha Lai (Carnegie Endowment) discusses the state of federated social media (Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, etc.). Topics include: A map of the fediverse What makes Bluesky new? Tools for tiny moderators Turning the dial of centralization “Community” or “echo chamber”? Will one platform “win” the fediverse? The beauty of exit The beauty of the unknown Links: Online Safety and the “Great Decentral...

Geoff Manne (International Center for Law & Economics) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discuss the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Topics include: The DoJ’s case: five weird tricks  Apple: closed from the start Let’s talk about green bubbles … Refusal to deal or exclusionary conduct? A well-defined product market (for once) Triple-bank-shot antitrust liability (eww) DoJ-...

Daphne Keller (Stanford Cyber Policy Center) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) have a wide-ranging conversation about the impact of the EU’s Digital Services Act on content moderation, the costs and benefits of platform transparency, the pervasiveness of complexity, the work of James C. Scott, Germans’ abiding thirst for data, the Burmese heroin trade, and more. For more, see Daphne’s recent artic...

Marshall Kosloff (The Realignment) discusses the abundance agenda—what it is, what it could achieve, how it applies in various policy areas, how to build a political coalition around it, how to implement it, and more. Topics include: Abundance of what? Energy policy: wtf is going on Fixing defense procurement Fixing state capacity Building an abundance coalition Culture war forever? Abundance afte...

From April 12, 2022 (Episode 317): Alec Stapp discusses the work, goals, and philosophy of his innovative new think tank, Institute for Progress. Topics include: Metascience: the key field you’ve never heard of Tech industry 🤝 policy wonks Alec’s theory of change How to evangelize for progress Baby making music (j/k not j/k) The need for an abundance agenda Links: Institute for Progress   Tech Po...

Paul Grewal (Coinbase) takes us on a deep dive into all aspects of crypto regulation, litigation, and legislation. A crossover episode with the Washington Legal Foundation / TechFreedom Tech in the Courts series. Topics include: The elevator pitch for crypto Securities law: it’s not the New Deal anymore The inconsistent SEC SEC v. Coinbase / Coinbase v. SEC Operation Choke Point 2.0 The need for c...

Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) provides a guided tour of the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine. Topics include: Major questions: an introduction No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative Is major questions new? Stories we tell about Congress Welcome to the kludgeocracy Politics vs. expertise The Supreme Court cannot save us Links: West Virginia v. EPA: Sound and Fury, Signifying What?...

Sayash Kapoor (Princeton) discusses the incoherence of precise p(doom) predictions and the pervasiveness of AI “snake oil.” Check out his and Arvind Narayanan’s new book, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference . Topics include: What’s a prediction, really? p(doom): your guess is as good as anyone’s Freakishly chaotic creatures (us, that is)...

Geoff Manne (International Center for Law & Economics) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discuss the many, many flaws in the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta (Facebook).  A crossover episode with the Washington Legal Foundation / TechFreedom Tech in the Courts series. Topics include: - The ontology of Facebook - Social networking: it’s not 2008 anymore - The FTC’s made-up market - The WhatsApp...

TechFreedom’s Corbin Barthold, Ari Cohn, and Santana Boulton partake in a summer doldrums bitchfest about recent and upcoming Supreme Court internet speech cases.  Topics include: SCOTUS ducks in Moody v. NetChoice Hey, let’s *not * reward bad-faith legislating Justice Kagan: progressive traitor (and we love it) Justice Alito is mad What’s next for online speech? SCOTUS ducks in Murthy v. Missouri...

Is AI a miracle? A threat? Will it free us? Enslave us? Both? Neither? What’s the future of AI and governance? AI and art? AI and elections? AI and social media? AI and the economy? AI and the world? Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast: AI and Everything. On this special episode, we present highlights from more than a year of conversations with leading experts on the state of the AI revolution. Fea...

Noah Smith (Noahpinion Substack) discusses techno-industrial competition with China and Russia. Topics include: American industry: we’re #2 :(  Allies: no longer a luxury NEPA sucks A brief lesson about nickel The death of state capacity: greatly exaggerated? Will information destroy liberalism? Clowns to the left, clowns to the right Hey, let’s *not* be divided and poor Links: Noahpinion (Substac...

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 It The 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 sense The Kids Online Safety Act: not about kids, not about safety Once more, with feeling: correlation is...

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 minutes The craziest story in the history of federal regulation FCC: Huzzah for crappy Internet (like in Europe)! SCOTUS: Congress must tackle major questions! Disparate treatment vs. dispa...

Arnold Kling discusses his recent article in Reason magazine, “Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work.” Topics include: Why central planning is impossible The importance of prices What is AI good for? Will AI know us better than we know ourselves? What markets will AI disrupt? Social media and tribal gang-sign flashing The myopia of the revanchist right Links: Not Even Art...

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 elite How do ideas take root? Influencers as exploiters of asymmetries Bullshit: an investigation Could platforms have stopped Stop the Steal? Fixing the expert class Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent The future of soc...

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-downers Tech and privacy: try living in an analogue village! The wicked problem of...

Richard Morrison (Competitive Enterprise Institute) joins the show, in a crossover episode with the Free the Economy podcast. Topics include: The history of podcasts The rise of micro media (find a thousand true fans!) Performative tech doomerism The idleness of romanticizing the past The quest for online community Conservatives in the Technium Links: Free the Economy Why Conservatism Failed The Q...

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 history Do 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 bo...

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-spaceship Space: it wants t...

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 shit TikTok ban bros: throwing spaghetti at the wall Foreign 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 guy...

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 Jawboning The Lies the 5th Circuit Told You About the Government ‘Pressuring Social Media to Censor’ Tech Policy Podcast #350: Wh...