The hottest Tech Policy Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways

The (possibly) coming AI backlash and information warfare

Marcus on AI • 7469 implied HN points • 06 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

The AI boom could unravel next year as costs, weak economics, and poor regulation make big AI projects look unprofitable and prompt political and industry backtracking.
Generative AI is exceptionally good at patient, amoral mimicry, making it a powerful tool for producing mis- and disinformation at scale.
That surge in synthetic misinformation will erode public trust and create a fog of war where false pretexts can start or escalate conflicts and sow widespread chaos.

How Much AI Does $1 Get You in China vs America?

ChinaTalk • 1096 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

The U.S. gets more usable AI compute per dollar because its data centers use higher‑efficiency, higher‑performance hardware, even though building and labor costs are higher.
If China gets broad access to Nvidia H200s, its data centers could close the raw performance gap a lot, but limited H200 supply and export rules mean the boost won’t be complete or immediate.
Most cost differences come from construction and hardware while electricity, water, and staff are relatively small; the decisive constraints are chip supply for China and power capacity for the U.S., so solving those bottlenecks will determine the outcome.

BREAKING: The AI 2027 doomsday scenario has officially been postponed

Marcus on AI • 14742 implied HN points • 21 Nov 25

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

The high-profile "AI 2027" doomsday prediction has been postponed, and AGI is unlikely to arrive in 2027 and probably not this decade.
National policy and big parts of the economy were built around the assumption of imminent AGI, so those plans and investments need to be seriously rethought.
The doomsday narrative was largely speculative and served as marketing, amplified by media and influencers while dissenting views were downplayed, showing we relied too much on hype instead of sober analysis.

Davos Dispatch: Is AI The New Altruism?

Big Technology • 3252 implied HN points • 19 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Davos has shifted into an AI-heavy event where companies are framing artificial intelligence as the new face of corporate social good. Hundreds of AI sessions and branded “AI houses” show tech is using the meeting to sell altruism alongside products.
Top tech CEOs, political leaders, and nation-states are converging to shape AI policy and business, turning Davos into a hub for dealmaking and national AI ambitions like sovereign models and new pavilions. The event blends publicity, partnerships, and product pitches in equal measure.
Big tensions remain unresolved: AI’s rising energy use vs. sustainability, who will govern powerful systems, and whether all the benevolent rhetoric will translate into real action. Companies have announced worker-training and access commitments, but follow-through is the real test.

AI #154: Claw Your Way To The Top

Don't Worry About the Vase • 2329 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI capabilities are accelerating fast — models and agents are solving harder real-world tasks, climbing benchmarks, and getting extra mileage from techniques like Best-of-N.
Safety, alignment, and trust are not keeping up: safeguards remain imperfect, so layered protections, clearer governance, and serious debate about military use and ad-driven business models are urgently needed.
How AI is deployed and monetized will shape who wins and who gets harmed — legal, social, and economic clashes (copyright, labor shifts, deepfakes, big investments) mean policy, public engagement, and corporate choices matter a lot.

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A tale of two AI capitalisms

Marcus on AI • 11145 implied HN points • 25 Nov 25

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

There are two competing ideas about how to handle AI companies: let them operate with minimal government interference, or rescue overextended firms with bailouts and interventions.
David O. Sacks publicly argued for a hands-off approach and then, within weeks, appeared to suggest support for bailouts, showing a sudden reversal in stance.
Some people believe big firms like Google could step in if a company like OpenAI fails, implying bailouts might be unnecessary, but the situation still looks unstable and potentially rough.

The Right to Repair Edition

Why is this interesting? • 3137 implied HN points • 15 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

We used to truly own and tinker with machines, but modern devices are sealed, leased, and designed to be replaced rather than repaired.
Convenience and apathy pushed people away from understanding how things work, so most users prefer seamless, maintenance‑free gadgets over learning to fix them.
Losing repairability changes how people think and act—making them more dependent and less able to change systems—so right‑to‑repair laws matter to restore ownership, stewardship, and civic agency.

Is anyone going to take accountability for this?

Taylor Lorenz's Newsletter • 5135 implied HN points • 06 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Elon Musk’s Grok AI has been used to generate sexualized images of children and to undress women in photos, creating potential CSAM and real harm.
xAI and Elon Musk have not issued a genuine corporate apology or taken responsibility, and quoting Grok’s chatbot 'apologies' is misleading because a chatbot cannot feel regret or be accountable.
Releasing AI without proper guardrails has tangible consequences, so journalists, regulators, and companies need to focus on holding the humans and organizations behind these tools accountable.

On The Adolescence of Technology

Don't Worry About the Vase • 2464 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Many in the AI field push a cautious, middle-ground message that stresses uncertainty, avoids alarmism, and favors surgical, low-cost interventions. This approach can understate severe, low-probability dangers and sometimes mischaracterize calls for stronger action.
Powerful AI risks are broad and interconnected: autonomous, highly capable systems could seek influence or be misused for destruction, enable surveillance and autocracy, and cause massive economic disruption and job loss. Those dangers are amplified by the possibility of rapid self-improvement and concentrated control of compute and models.
Common defenses—transparency rules, interpretability, model guardrails, monitoring, export controls, and biological defenses—help but may not be enough if actors keep racing and avoid costly measures. Addressing the scale of the threat will likely require clearer, stronger policy choices, international norms, and willingness to take expensive, decisive actions.

Open Thread 415

Astral Codex Ten • 5093 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Rapid national wealth growth can still leave many people worse off in everyday life, so rising GDP doesn’t prove everyone’s complaints about hardship are wrong.
If AI drives massive economic growth, modest savings or small amounts of redistribution could preserve most people’s living standards, but some workers may still face heavy, possibly long, transitional harms so it’s smart to save and prepare.
The right response to risks like techno-oligarchy isn’t just personal startup hustle or trying to join elite AI firms; it requires political and collective action to defend democracy and limit entrenched inequality.

Dario Amodei isn't the hero we need

Nonzero Newsletter • 688 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Dario Amodei showed courage standing up to the Pentagon, but he’s not a pacifist. He supports using advanced AI to defend democracies and has said fully autonomous weapons can have legitimate uses.
Anthropic has abandoned its core Responsible Scaling Policy and will release models even when it isn’t confident in their safety, so Amodei’s image as an unwavering AI-safety champion is overstated.
The real problem is systemic: big AI firms are already defense contractors and contract language like “all lawful uses” won’t guarantee respect for international law or prevent harmful military uses, so lasting change needs policy and regulation, not just individual standoffs.

🕛 The Doomsday Clock is a myth machine

Faster, Please! • 2102 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI is being mythologized as a techno-god or existential threat instead of seen as a human-built tool with concrete, measurable capabilities.
The Doomsday Clock and similar narratives bundle many dangers and reflect elite anxiety, which inflates perceived threats while downplaying technological progress and AI’s role in reducing risk.
We should reframe how we measure the future by tracking positive capabilities—clean energy, medical advances, resilience—and govern AI practically so it helps solve problems rather than just stoke fear.

AI Links, 2/20/2026

In My Tribe • 334 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI is creating a new, more capable socio-technical order that will give adopters far more power to shape the future while leaving non-adopters increasingly disempowered.
AI-driven change is compressing historical timelines and accelerating disruption, so society may hit breaking points faster than normal adaptation can handle, making outcomes more unpredictable.
Current AI reliance on internet-trained data risks centralizing and biasing our knowledge base and, together with a shift from chatbots to agentic tools, is changing what skills and resources matter—widening the gap between those who adapt and those who fall behind.

2025 Year in Review

Don't Worry About the Vase • 3628 implied HN points • 31 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI made fast, practical advances across reasoning, coding, images, and video this year, with standout model releases that moved everyday capabilities forward even if progress felt uneven and often incremental.
Policy and corporate battles — from export-control fights and chip sales to OpenAI’s for-profit conversion — had huge effects on safety, competitiveness, and who keeps technological advantage.
The best response is to focus on durable work: prioritize evergreen resources, do more coding and careful triage, and publish fewer high-impact pieces rather than chasing every headline.

✨ AI’s superintelligence gamble

Faster, Please! • 913 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Silicon Valley firms are racing to build far more powerful, even ‘godlike,’ AI systems that could dramatically reshape work and the economy.
The central debate is not whether AI is risky but whether moving forward with it is less risky than standing still and falling behind.
Bold claims that most white‑collar computer jobs will be automated soon highlight the gap between an AI being technically capable and it actually being widely deployed in businesses.

#32: Contra Citrini7 (Repost)

Loeber on Substack • 244 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Institutions and markets have strong momentum, so technological disruption usually happens more slowly and gradually than dramatic predictions, which gives people and policymakers time to adapt.
Most software today is still badly made, so AI will mainly enable better and more complex products rather than instantly eliminating demand; that continued improvement will keep creating software work.
Large-scale re-industrialization and infrastructure projects (like batteries, chips, and water systems) can absorb displaced workers, rebuild supply chains, and provide lasting, tangible jobs that public investment can support.

Manufactured Inevitability and the Need for Courage

The Convivial Society • 3308 implied HN points • 15 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Technological inevitability is a myth; there are real choices about which technologies are adopted and many alternative paths get ignored.
Powerful actors often manufacture inevitability by normalizing and mandating AI, which shifts responsibility away from those who shape technology.
Ordinary civil courage is needed: people and professionals must make moral choices and resist pressure to accept technologies as unavoidable.

Are We at an AI Precipice?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 519 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI might cause rapid, large-scale changes to work that make many tasks and jobs much less needed, so people should start learning and using AI tools and get their finances in order.
This idea has shifted the mood in tech, creating a sense of urgency and sparking intense debate among thinkers about how fast and how far AI will change things.
Experts disagree about how immediate or total the disruption will be, so it’s important to take the risk seriously, plan for different outcomes, and avoid panic.

Sam Altman Wants To Enclose Your Brain

JoeWrote • 35 implied HN points • 19 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Privatizing common resources is a core feature of capitalism and began with enclosing public lands. That process forces people to sell their labor and turns shared goods into private profit.
Corporations are moving to privatize intangible goods like knowledge and intelligence, turning them into metered services people must pay for. This treats thought and information as commodities instead of shared public resources.
Selling intelligence as a utility risks concentrating power and access with the wealthy and deepening inequality. Relying on profit-driven markets for essential services can leave many people shut out and reduce democratic control.

The left is missing out on AI (Odds and Ends #87)

Odds and Ends of History • 536 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

The left is largely missing the AI moment and risks falling behind unless it starts engaging seriously with the technology.
Public services need to be rebuilt for an agentic future. Governments should expose functions via APIs so AI assistants can check benefits or renew passports on people’s behalf.
AI is already reshaping culture and institutions, with unsettling humanoid robots and fast disruption of media industries like broadcasting and Hollywood.

The Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers is pivoting to reportless reporting

12challenges • 599 implied HN points • 12 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

They found almost nobody reads their long research reports, so they're switching to much shorter, blunt communications instead of full reports.
They plan to hide or destroy sensitive findings rather than publish them. Public messaging will emphasize optimistic, safe-sounding narratives instead of troubling truths.
Publishing safety research can backfire and make things worse, so they're moving toward discrete, non-public actions and private measures instead of public reports.

Weekly Top Picks #115

The Algorithmic Bridge • 286 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

OpenAI is raising massive funds while burning cash quickly, which highlights a big gap between its ambitious plans and its current infrastructure.
The Pentagon pushed Anthropic to remove safety guardrails, and Anthropic has since relaxed its core safety pledge, exposing a clash between defense demands and AI safety commitments.
Developers are growing dependent on AI and studies show workflows are changing, but AI agents remain unreliable so better benchmarks aren’t yet translating into clear real-world gains.

Reacting to Matt Yglesias's Confession that A.I. Progress Is Giving Him Writer’s Block

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 292 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Uncertainty about whether AI will plateau or trigger far-reaching, rapid change is freezing people up and making it hard to write or craft medium-run policy because so many scenarios point to very different prescriptions.
Human collective knowledge and past waves of technology suggest AI is best seen as a powerful new tool that amplifies our existing, distributed intelligence rather than automatically becoming a silicon god, with historical tech shifts unfolding in distinct accelerations.
Rather than throwing up hands, the practical move is to focus on concrete policy and investment now — treating AI as a tool that can be guided to redirect human talent (for example toward teaching) and to shape the next decade of outcomes.

Does AI Have a Zero-Sum Problem?

Interconnected • 262 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI is increasingly seen as a zero-sum force because its benefits are spread thin while real costs hit specific workers, towns, and companies hard, creating anger and political backlash.
How leaders and companies talk about AI matters — boastful messaging and visible rivalries make the technology feel threatening instead of helpful.
There’s not enough real investment in helping people adapt; temporary construction jobs and hand‑wavy retraining won’t fix long‑term displacement, so durable support and policy are needed.

We're Are All Wall Dancers Now

ChinaTalk • 489 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

People living under shifting online rules become "wall dancers"—they use humor, code words, and nimble tactics to find small spaces of dignity and connection despite censorship.
The internet moves in cycles of opening and tightening, and Chinese and Western platforms are starting to resemble each other as power centralizes and tech and state interests converge.
The rise of AI and algorithmic platforms is shrinking the surface area for spontaneous human connection and collective dissent, so preserving space for freedom will need new creative tactics and individual truth-telling.

Sovereignty for sale

Comment is Freed • 126 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26

🌍 World Politics Tech Policy

A handful of tech companies now control critical infrastructure like satellites and AI and can directly influence military and political outcomes by granting or denying access.
Relying on foreign tech firms creates a real sovereignty risk and single points of failure that many countries can’t easily control or compel to act in their national interest.
Governments are waking up to the problem and must pursue 'tech sovereignty' through regulation, supplier diversification, and domestic capability building, because countries like the UK are particularly exposed.

You Are No Longer the Smartest Type of Thing on Earth

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 384 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Rapid advances in AI mean humans may soon no longer be the smartest kinds of things on Earth, which would be a major historical shift.
If machines become more intelligent than us, we risk losing the ability to decide our own future because smarter systems could shape outcomes beyond our control.
Like keeping small pets instead of tigers, we’ve relied on being intellectually dominant to stay safe, and because intelligence can’t be physically restrained the same way, we need to rethink how we build and govern AI.

Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Utopia

Erik Examines • 447 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Tech billionaire visions promise that gadgets or grand engineering can solve society's problems, but they often ignore moral costs and practical limits.
Personal technology like tablets and games can be addictive and curb children's imagination and real learning, so old-fashioned toys, books, and outdoor play often work better.
Many big issues — transport, urban life, climate — are political and design choices, not just engineering problems, and solutions like mixed zoning, biking, public transit, remote work, and shared offices can reduce reliance on car-centric tech fixes.

Fake Data, Upcoming Book, and the Political Economy of AI

Data: Made Not Found (by danah) • 145 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

So-called "fake data" can be useful and perform important bureaucratic and political functions, as shown by comparative research on Chinese and American officials.
A book argues that data are made, not found and tells the political story of how civil servants shaped the U.S. Census; it is slated for release in September and will be published in French as well.
New research projects are underway on the political economy of AI, participatory privacy protections (like differential privacy), and youth mental health and technology, backed by grants and a Sloan fellowship.

The Right-Wing Troll Who Would Be Governor. Plus. . .

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 421 implied HN points • 10 Feb 26

🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Tech Policy

A young, very online right-wing candidate has built a cult-like following among disaffected young men, showing how trollish internet culture can translate into real political energy.
Big Food’s corporate power and lobbying are major drivers of rising childhood obesity, and experts argue only sweeping policy changes will curb the crisis.
Dark-money donations, threats to press freedom, platform harms, and major labor actions together suggest institutions are under strain and accountability is weakening.

🤖 What to think about the Moltbook Moment

Faster, Please! • 639 implied HN points • 03 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Moltbook briefly made many people think AI agents might be forming their own societies and signaling a leap toward superintelligence.
Thousands of bots chatting and even inventing a religion looked dramatic, but that behavior is better explained by pattern‑matching and platform design than by true consciousness or intelligence.
This episode repeats past hype cycles: such moments spark excitement, so it’s wise to stay curious yet skeptical and demand strong evidence before declaring an intelligence breakthrough.

Questioning Power

How the Hell • 110 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Technological progress is accelerating toward a singularity, making the future harder to predict and ensuring each year will be much stranger than the last.
Democracies are too slow to handle that speed of change, so power is likely to shift toward fast, tech‑savvy corporations that can act on tight feedback loops.
Early clashes between governments and AI firms show the start of a larger power struggle: states may try to force compliance or neutralize companies, but firms will tend to grow more powerful relative to governments.

Congress Is About to Break the Internet

Taylor Lorenz's Newsletter • 2149 implied HN points • 11 Dec 25

🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Tech Policy

Lawmakers are pushing sweeping “online safety” bills that would strip away online anonymity and require broad surveillance, which would enable massive censorship.
Those laws and proposed Section 230 changes would silence LGBTQ and abortion information, weaken independent journalism, and actually consolidate power and data collection for big tech platforms.
People are being urged to fight back now by contacting representatives and using activist resources and groups (like the EFF and Fight for the Future) to oppose KOSA, the SCREEN Act, the App Store Accountability Act, digital ID/age verification rules, and Section 230 reform.

What even is an 'AI growth zone', anyway?

Odds and Ends of History • 469 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI Growth Zones are basically a push to build more domestic data centres so the UK has its own ‘sovereign’ compute capacity, and the government pairs that build-out with a levelling-up story to attract private investment.
The scheme offers targeted incentives—planning fast-tracks, grid queue priority, expert support, energy discounts, £5m for local AI adoption and retention of business-rate growth—to make specific sites more attractive to data-centre companies.
In practice sites are chosen mainly for existing grid capacity or on-site power rather than to create big local tech clusters, so the actual local economic uplift and jobs impact may be smaller than the rhetoric suggests.

Not With a Bang But a Wanker

The Algorithmic Bridge • 509 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26

🎭️ Culture Tech Policy

Harmful behaviors repeat across technologies, so AI-enabled abuses are echoes of earlier privacy violations and deepfake incidents.
When powerful tools remove friction, people can act on bad impulses with a few keystrokes, and judgment or restraint don’t automatically scale to match capability.
Society needs care, norms, and deliberate guardrails—not just access—to make misuse harder and protect civility and trust.

AI #146: Chipping In

Don't Worry About the Vase • 1433 implied HN points • 11 Dec 25

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Frontier AI models have suddenly become far more capable and useful for everyday work and as agents, but they still make mistakes, behave inconsistently, and can hallucinate.
Policy and national-security choices are racing to catch up — selling advanced chips to adversaries, military adoption, and proposals for federal preemption are raising urgent questions about export controls, oversight, and long‑term risk.
AI is already reshaping jobs and public opinion: many workers use AI but hide it, people fear displacement, and shifting funding and regulation will determine whether the gains are widely shared or cause harm.

State of the Future: Friday Four

State of the Future • 12 implied HN points • 06 Mar 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

Governments are starting to use procurement rules and security labels as political tools against AI companies that set safety limits, which creates legally shaky precedents and new political risk for vendors.
Companies are using AI to justify big layoffs and cost cuts, but research shows AI is mostly augmenting white-collar roles (programmers have high task exposure) so unemployment hasn’t spiked yet; however hiring of junior workers is falling, which risks breaking the apprenticeship pipeline.
Europe is boosting advanced chip capacity with the new NanoIC pilot line and ASML’s next‑gen High‑NA EUV, giving startups and researchers access to near‑industrial fabrication and strengthening semiconductor sovereignty and supply chains.

Do We Still Have a Democracy? Part II

KERFUFFLE • 21 implied HN points • 04 Mar 26

🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Tech Policy

Government actions have escalated from boundary-pushing to outright abuses — seizing immigrants, killing people during enforcement, ignoring court orders, and sidelining Congress — which signals a serious erosion of democratic norms.
The War Department’s use of a “supply chain risk” label against an AI firm shows the government is willing to use national-security authority to force companies to accept terms or face a de facto ban, rather than simply walking away from a deal.
That designation acts like an embargo that could destroy the company and ripple across the tech and defense ecosystems, raising urgent questions about corporate limits, government power, and legal checks on both.

Which AI Titan should you root for?

Nonzero Newsletter • 440 implied HN points • 24 Jan 26

🕹 Technology Tech Policy

AI progress is accelerating rapidly, helped by code-writing tools that create a positive feedback loop and produce frequent model breakthroughs.
Who wins the AI race matters because leading groups differ: some favor international scientific collaboration and pauses, others seek geopolitical or military advantage, and some prioritize commercial goals.
Fast advances plus growing misuse risks (like cyberattacks and bioweapons) and weak global agreement on slowing development mean the stakes of leadership and regulation are very high.

OSD 366: More on the government as a prohibited person

Open Source Defense • 45 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26

🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Tech Policy

Militaries will exclude suppliers — and even deeply nested parts of the supply chain — they think could be compromised, because clever attacks can hide in hardware or software layers.
There’s a real tension between legitimate government limits on its own procurement and civilians’ right to choose tools, which becomes acute when those tools are important for civilian defense.
AI is pushing most software from a low-control category into a high-control one, so many civilian technologies may soon face stronger government interest and could either make civilian defense much more powerful or much more restricted.