The Dynamist

Quantum computing has been "five years away" for decades, but when NVIDIA's Jensen Huang says we've hit an inflection point, Congress listens and stocks soar. The reality? We're still building very expensive proof-of-concepts. Today's quantum computers run on 100 qubits—impressive to physicists, useless to you. Commercial viability needs a million qubits, a 10,000x leap that's not incremental progress but a complete reinvention.Unlike the familiar tech story where room-sized computers became pocket devices, quantum is binary: it either works at massive scale or it's an elaborate academic exercise. There's no quantum equivalent of early PCs that could at least balance your checkbook—no useful middle ground between 100 qubits and a million.China wants quantum for cryptography: the master key to any lock. America's lead exists mostly on paper—in research publications and VC rounds, not deployed systems. Dr. Peter Shadbolt from PsiQuantum, fresh from congressional testimony, argues America must commit now or risk losing a race that could redefine pharmaceutical research and financial security. The real question: can a democracy sustain long-term investment in technologies that offer zero immediate gratification?

Is free speech in global decline? A new survey suggests public support for free expression is dropping worldwide, with citizens in authoritarian countries like Venezuela and Hungary showing stronger commitment to free speech than many living in democracies.From the unfulfilled digital promises of the Arab Spring to Europe's controversial Digital Services Act, the Internet hasn't necessarily delivered the free speech revolution many predicted. Americans under 30 are less committed to free speech principles than previous generations, while both of the U.S.’s major political parties face accusations of using government power to control information.As AI reshapes how we communicate and governments worldwide rethink speech regulations, what does this mean for the future of human expression? Are we witnessing a fundamental shift in how societies value free speech, or simply recycling ancient debates in digital form?Evan is joined by Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt, and author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media, and Ashkhen Kazaryan, Senior Legal Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Previously, she was the lead for North and Latin America on the content regulation team at Meta.

Gail Slater is the Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Department of Justice (DOJ). She was nominated in December of last year and confirmed by the Senate in March on a bipartisan 78-19 vote. She inherited some major antitrust cases brought by prior administrations—including against Google, Apple, Visa, and LiveNation. And in her short time, she has launched probes, brought and settled cases, and offered the DoJ’s opinion in private litigation. But beyond her role as a law enforcer, Slater is a manifestation of the realignment of not just politics generally, but antitrust policy specifically. Her first speech in her new role was titled “The Conservative Roots of America First Antitrust Enforcement.” And in recent interviews, she has shed light on how she sees her approach to antitrust contrasting with the laissez-faire approach of the Chicago school and the aggressive posture of her predecessors in the Biden Administration.When it comes to technology, Slater has taken a strong view that antitrust and US competitiveness are not at odds, but rather that antitrust makes the US more competitive vis-a-vis China. And just recently, she announced action the DoJ has taken at the intersection of antitrust and free speech, another key area of focus. Evan and Slater discuss what “America First Antitrust” means, how the approach is similar and different from her predecessor in the Biden Administration, and the relationship between antitrust and national security.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is now President Trump's signature legislative achievement, including sweeping changes to taxes, immigration, and spending priorities. But buried in the budget reconciliation process, an AI regulation fight became one of the most contentious debates in the entire package.Senator Ted Cruz championed a 10-year moratorium on most state and local AI regulation, arguing that a patchwork of conflicting laws would hamstring American companies in their competition with China. His solution was clever: tie the moratorium to rural broadband funding through budget reconciliation, allowing it to pass with simple Republican majorities.The Senate parliamentarian approved the measure under the Byrd rule, giving Cruz's proposal the green light. But the coalition that formed against it was unexpected. Instead of typical partisan lines, opponents included not just Democrats and left-leaning groups, but also MAGA influencers like Steve Bannon, conservative senators like Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, child safety advocates, and Republican governors.The drama peaked when Blackburn—after negotiating a compromise with Cruz to reduce the time frame to five years and add exemptions to allow state laws on child safety and rights of publicity—walked away from the deal at the last moment. When the dust settled, the Senate voted 99-1 to strip the AI moratorium entirely—a decisive defeat for the tech industry.The fight exposed deeper tensions over federalism, corporate power, and whether conservatives are willing to override state authority to boost American tech competitiveness. The resounding rejection suggests many weren't. So where does the fight for a national AI standard go from here, and what does this defeat mean for the shaky alliance between “tech bros” and the Trump Administration? Evan is joined by James Wallner, Vice President for Policy at FAI, and Luke Hogg, Director of Technology Policy at FAI.

Last week on the Dynamist, we spoke with several of the architects behind the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook (TIPP). Part I covered key questions over regulation, trade policy, workforce development, investing in frontier science and technology, and how manufacturing can safeguard national security.In Part II, we dive into one of the pillars of TIPP: Industrial Power. Austin Bishop and Julius Krein, co-founders of the New American Industrial Alliance, join Evan to tackle the tough questions underlying America's industrial revival. How should we balance factories that employ large numbers of workers versus highly automated, hyper-efficient plants? Should manufacturing focus more on military capabilities or products aimed at global markets? And given the gap between investor expectations and the reality of manufacturing returns, how can we realistically finance this industrial renewal?COVID laid bare just how vulnerable we've become through dependence on foreign supply chains—particularly those controlled by geopolitical rivals. Krein and Bishop argue that it's time to rebuild the industrial foundations America traded away for cheap consumer goods and service-sector jobs. The proposed solution involves innovative financial structures inspired by sovereign wealth funds and a reshaped private equity model designed for the long haul. But can these strategies compete when tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Google are already constructing their own supply chains and new industrial policies languish in Washington conference rooms?Evan explores with Bishop and Krein whether America still has time—and political will—to regain control over its industrial destiny, or if decades of decline have already pushed us too far behind.

The U.S. production base has slipped: China passed America in manufacturing output in 2011 and last year ran a surplus roughly equal to Britain’s entire GDP; at current capacity, it would take the United States about eight years to replace key munitions at wartime production rates.The urgency has propelled an alliance of think tanks — the Foundation for American Innovation, American Compass, Institute for Progress, and  New American Industrial Alliance — to publish the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook. Their proposals span three critical pillars: Industrial Power, Frontier Science and Technology, and National Security. They range from ambitious initiatives like "Project Paperclip 2.0" to fast-track foreign-born STEM PhDs, to establishing twenty “X-Labs” at $50 million each for transformative science funding. They also advocate for "Special Compute Zones" that would waive certain environmental requirements to rapidly scale up AI computing infrastructure, treating computational capacity with the same urgency America once reserved for World War II shipyards.As the United States finds itself at a techno-industrial crossroads, is America capable of marshaling the political will and institutional capacity needed to reverse decades of industrial decline? Can these ambitious proposals navigate the complex realities of American governance while delivering meaningful results? Or is this comprehensive vision destined to join countless other policy recommendations in Washington's archive of unfulfilled potential?Evan is joined by the architects behind this effort: Kelvin Yu, lead author and a non-resident fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation; Chris Griswold, Policy Director at American Compass; Santi Ruiz, Senior Editor at the Institute for Progress; and Robert Bellafiore, Managing Director for Policy at FAI.

President Trump’s tariffs on China have highlighted how much American companies, and consumers, depend on products made in China. And arguably no company has been more exposed than Apple. The conventional wisdom in the West is that Apple and other corporations simply flocked to China for cheap, unskilled labor. While that is true, it masks the depth of Apple’s relationship with the Middle Kingdom. Yes, Apple products are made in China. But Apple also made China—at least the advanced technological China confronting the U.S. today. From training tens of millions of workers, to investing hundreds of billions in the country, our guest today argues that Apple has done more than anyone, or anything, to make China a manufacturing powerhouse. As one tech analyst observed, “It’s hard to reconcile the fact that the greatest American company, the most capitalist thing in the world, survives on the basis of a country that has Communist in its title.”So how did America’s most iconic tech company become so invested in, and dependent on, the U.S.’s chief global adversary? What did Apple CEO Tim Cook know about what was happening, and when did he know it? How might the world look but for these investments? And as the U.S. government urges companies to de-risk and decouple from China, what position does that put Apple in?Evan is joined by Patrick McGee. He was the Financial Times’s Apple reporter from 2019 to 2023 and is now the author of Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company.

Nuclear power is experiencing a notable revival in policy circles. The Trump administration has moved quickly on this front, drafting executive orders to accelerate plant construction, directing the Pentagon to explore reactor installations on military bases, and reshaping the regulatory landscape. A recent $900 million solicitation for small modular reactors (SMRs) has been modified to emphasize technical merit and streamline deployment.But can America's nuclear renaissance actually deliver? Traditional nuclear plants remain staggeringly expensive—the recent Vogtle reactors in Georgia arrived seven years late and $35 billion over budget (the kind of numbers that make even venture capitalists nervous). A dozen startups are betting smaller, modular designs can slash costs and deployment times, but they face the triple threat of regulatory uncertainty, NIMBY resistance, and an energy market still obsessed with quarterly returns. Yet the alignment of energy security needs, climate goals, and now AI's voracious power requirements creates a potential inflection point for nuclear technology.Joining us to explore these questions are Ed Petit de Mange, Director of Fuel Recycling at Oklo, whose next-generation microreactors can operate on recycled nuclear fuel; Patrick O'Brien, Director of Government Affairs at Holtec International, bringing decades of industry experience to the SMR revolution, Kathleen Nelson Romans, Head of Commercial Development at Aalo Atomics, whose compact reactors aim to serve rapidly deployable off-grid and microgrid applications, and Emmet Penney, energy writer and Senior Fellow at FAI, who provides critical context on nuclear's role in our energy transition.

Most American parents say technology makes it harder to raise kids than in the pre-social media era. And while social scientists debate the exact impact of ubiquitous Internet access on children, policymakers are increasingly responding to parents’ concerns. The Kids Online Safety Act, which aims to address the addictive features of social media that hook kids, was recently reintroduced by Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). The legislation would also require tech platforms to take steps to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors, including the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, drug abuse, and sexploitation. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. John James (R-MI) are promoting the App Store Accountability Act, which would require Google and Apple to verify users’ ages before downloading apps. And Senators Cruz (R-TX) and Schatz (D-HI) propose banning kids from using social media altogether.There is clearly a lot of interest from parents and policymakers in addressing these concerns over the impact of technology on children. But there is also a robust and ongoing debate about the actual harm to kids, and whether concerns are well founded or overblown. Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation made quite a splash, but many social psychologists have pushed back on his findings. And while the surgeon general under President Biden advocated a warning label for social media, a recent study by researchers at the University of South Florida found that kids with smartphones were better off than those without smartphones, while acknowledging harms from cyber bullying and otherwise.The fundamental question seems to be: Is this just another moral panic, or are we letting Big Tech conduct a massive unregulated experiment on our children's brains?Evan is joined by Clare Morell, Director of the Technology and Human Flourishing Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She is the author of The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News.

America's infrastructure future isn't being decided in Washington—it's being fought permit by permit in state capitals across the country. While politicians talk about building more, the real bottlenecks are happening where rubber meets bureaucratic road.From Donald Trump to Pete Buttigieg, everyone agrees: America has forgotten how to build things. But even if Washington cleared every federal rule tomorrow, states would still hold the keys to actually breaking ground. Whether it's Clean Air Act permits, water discharge approvals, or the maze of mini-NEPAs and local reviews, states issue most of the paperwork that determines if your project lives or dies.This isn't just red tape—it can be competitive advantage. States that master the art of streamlined permitting without sacrificing environmental standards can capture billions in reshoring investment. Digital dashboards, consolidated reviews, shot-clocks with automatic approvals—these bureaucratic innovations are becoming economic development superpowers.Federal dollars from infrastructure, CHIPS, and climate bills are queued up, but shovels aren't hitting the ground. From geothermal in California to advanced nuclear in Montana, nearly every clean technology faces its first real test at the state level. Joining us are Emmet Penney, Senior Fellow at FAI focusing on Infrastructure and Energy, and Thomas Hochman, Director of Infrastructure Policy at FAI. For more on what's working and what's not, check out their State Permitting Playbook and the new State Permitting Scorecard.