The Frontier

Tim Hwang and Rachel Reses are joined by Vibecamp Chief Enthusiasm Officer Brooke Bowman and FAI Director of Artificial Intelligence & Chief Economist Samuel Hammond to talk through this summer’s Vibecamp gathering. We cover: how it became a non-tech event that lots of tech people love, what it means to integrate science and technology with the “woo” parts of life, how our friends in AI synthesize...

Tim Hwang and Rachel Reses are joined by FAI Nonresident Senior Fellow and UCLA quantum scientist Prineha Narang to unpack the White House’s recent quantum-related executive orders . We cover: what the “offensive” and “defensive” game look like in quantum, whether strong government action is a blessing or a curse for the industry, how the executive branch cultivates technical expertise, and whethe...

Tim Hwang is joined by Middle East Institute senior fellow Mohammed Soliman to chat about his new book, West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East . We cover: why the Indo-Pacific may be America’s most important strategic theater, whether diverse international partnerships will be enough to balance Chinese and Russian power in the region, how we keep getting sucked into quagmires...

Tim Hwang and Rachel Reses are joined by Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Sobolik and FAI Director of Technology and Statecraft Joshua Levine to unpack the new OpenAI report on Chinese covert influence ops targeting U.S. tech policy. We cover: why some Americans find anti-data center discourse compelling in the first place, how China hawks can expose CCP efforts to sow distrust in US institu...

Tim Hwang is joined by Coefficient Giving’s biosecurity lead Andrew Snyder-Beattie , Global Health Investment Corporation alum Charlie Petty , and FAI Senior Fellow Josh Wentzel to take the temperature of the biosecurity field. We cover: why biodefense progress is lagging even in the physical world, what incentives hold investors back from pouring funds into biosecurity, what we can learn from Ope...

Tim Hwang is joined by FAI Senior Fellow and Nuclear Barbarians podcast host Emmet Penney to reflect on nuclear regulators’ new approach to licensing. We cover: how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission became more fixated on regulating nuclear projects than promoting them, what explains the current political momentum around nuclear energy, why a competent NRC is essential for overseeing such a powerf...

Tim Hwang and Rachel Reses are joined by Discipulus Ventures founder Jakob Diepenbrock and FAI Director of Technology and Statecraft Joshua Levine to explain the hard tech boom in El Segundo, CA. We cover: what makes a city attractive to innovators, whether building in the physical world can ever really be considered a “trend,” what kind of founder gravitates toward the Gundo, and why using longev...

Tim Hwang and Rachel Reses are joined by Butterworth’s restauranteur Bart Hutchins and Hamilton Society and Ulysses co-founder Will O’Brien to chat about the intimate ties between politics, architecture, and social gathering. We cover: DC’s legacy of French-adjacent restaurants where politicians can see and be seen, why San Franciscans are gravitating to a formal debate society, whether culture is...

Tim Hwang is joined by Palantir’s Madeline Hart , coauthor of Mobilize: How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III , to explore the nexus between the message of Mobilize and FAI’s new research on revitalizing American defense. We cover: why the U.S. is using dusty old military infrastructure in our foreign entanglements, what kind of personality is best equipped to fix the d...

Tim Hwang is joined by FAI Nonresident Senior Fellow and UCLA quantum scientist Prineha Narang to react to new research showing that quantum computing might ruin cryptography way sooner than we think. We cover: when scientists might achieve fault-tolerant quantum computing, how careful you should be with your crypto wallet, how long it’ll take for quantum scientists to be able to brag about their...

Tim Hwang and Rachel Reses are joined by FAI Senior Fellow Luke Hogg to monitor the “monitoring the situation” situation: what went wrong with Polymarket’s “Situation Room” pop-up bar, why people want to watch bleak and violent events unfold in real time, whether amateur analysts are getting too good at flight-tracking, and whether a medieval peasant would be more bowled over by a Dorito or your G...

Tim Hwang is joined by FAI Senior Fellow James Wallner and Matt’s Five Points newsletter publisher Matt Glassman to explain the debate over how GOP senators might handle the SAVE America Act: how cloture and the talking filibuster differ, how obscure procedural rules can mold the shape of debate, what might happen if senators realized they could just do things, and why members of Congress talk lik...

Tim Hwang is joined by FAI Director of Science Policy Ian Banks, FAI Director of Outreach Rachel Reses, and Renaissance Philanthropy’s Charles Yang to break down this unique moment in American science: how “personnel is policy” applies to science-focused agencies too, who’s becoming the Marco Rubio of public health, why scientific storytelling matters, and what it would take for the right to get i...

Tim Hwang is joined by FAI senior fellow Dean Ball and Yale Law School professor Ketan Ramakrishnan to unpack the showdown between the Department of War and Anthropic: why the real issue isn't the contract but the punishment, what happens when the state threatens to excommunicate a company from the entire chip and cloud ecosystem, whether Congress will eventually try to write Claude's constitution...

This week on The Frontier Tim Hwang is joined by Sam Hammond and Emmett Penney to break down the stories shaping tech policy: the Department of War’s escalating fight with Anthropic and why emergent misalignment means you shouldn’t let Pete Hegseth tune your AI, Elon’s zaibatsu merger and whether putting data centers in space is genius or cope, Disney’s cease and desist to ByteDance and the twilig...