The Dynamist

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.

In an era where government tech projects often end in billion-dollar failures and privacy nightmares, there's a tiny Baltic nation that's quietly revolutionized what's possible. Estonia—a country of just 1.3 million people—has built what might be the world's most efficient digital government. Every public service is online. Digital signatures save 2% of GDP annually. And in a twist that should intrigue American conservatives, they've done it with smaller government, not bigger.How did a former Soviet republic become a model of lean digital governance? What's their secret for avoiding the "big-bang IT project" disasters that plague Washington? And most importantly—can America's divided political system learn anything from Estonia's success?Joining for this episode are two experts who've studied Estonia's digital miracle up close. Dr. Keegan McBride is senior policy advisor in emerging technology and geopolitics at the Tony Blair Institute. He's also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. Joel Burke is the author of Rebooting a Nation: the Incredible Rise of Estonia, E-Government, and the Startup Revolution, and Senior Public Policy Analyst at Mozilla.

Mark Meador is the newest commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, which plays a dual role: enforcing both antitrust and consumer protection laws. It also serves as America's de facto technology regulator, including overseeing digital privacy and cybersecurity issues.Commissioner Meador embodies the political realignment reshaping conservative views on big business, capitalism, and free trade. The Trump Administration's antitrust cases against Big Tech represent arguably the clearest expression of this shift. While the Biden administration aggressively targeted mergers and acquisitions—Wall Street's bread and butter—many financial elites hoped Donald Trump's return would restore a laissez-faire approach to antitrust. They’ve been in for disappointment.A recent speech by Meador laid out a conservative vision for antitrust, challenging long-held Republican Party orthodoxies and sparking backlash from libertarians. He joins Evan to discuss the tensions at the heart of the this realignment: how free-market principles can coexist with robust antitrust enforcement; how skeptics of big government find common cause with critics of big business; and how conservatives are crafting their own distinctive approach to antitrust while embracing the bipartisan consensus that has emerged over the past eight years.

For decades, conservatives treated unions like an economic flu—tolerable in small doses, but best avoided altogether. But starting with Trump's election in 2016, that narrative began to unravel, with prominent Republicans increasingly taking pro-union positions.Perhaps the most striking example was Teamsters President Sean O'Brien speaking at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Despite both parties courting working class voters, union membership has cratered to just 10%, down from over 20% in the early '80s.This puts the Trump administration in an interesting position. The old conservative playbook misses that many workers fueling this movement are now Republican voters. The question isn't just whether conservatives should oppose unions, but whether they can afford to.Joining today is Liya Palagashvili, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, whose new paper "Do More Powerful Unions Generate Better Pro-Worker Outcomes?" examines these questions and argues for a moderate stance on unions.

The race to harness AI for scientific discovery may be the most consequential technological competition of this time—yet it's happening largely out of public view. While many AI headlines focus on chatbots writing essays and tech giants battling over billion-dollar models, a quiet revolution is brewing in America's laboratories.AI systems like AlphaFold (which recently won a Nobel Prize for protein structure prediction) are solving scientific problems that stumped humans for decades. A bipartisan coalition in Congress is now championing what they call the "American Science Acceleration Project" or ASAP—an audacious plan to make U.S. scientific research "ten times faster by 2030" through strategic deployment of AI. But as federal science funding faces pressure and international competition heats up, can America build the AI-powered scientific infrastructure we need? Will the benefits reach beyond elite coastal institutions to communities nationwide? And how do we ensure that as AI transforms scientific discovery, it creates opportunities instead of new divides?Joining us is Austin Carson, Founder and President of SeedAI, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding AI access and opportunity across America. Before launching SeedAI, Carson led government affairs at NVIDIA and served as Legislative Director for Rep. Michael McCaul. He's been deep in AI policy since 2016—ancient history in this rapidly evolving field—and recently organized the first-ever generative AI red-teaming event at DEF CON, collaborating with the White House to engage hundreds of college students in identifying AI vulnerabilities.

It’s easy to take for granted how much social media pervades our lives. Depending on the survey, upwards of 75-80 percent of Americans are using it daily—not to mention billions of people around the world. And over the past decade, we’ve seen a major backlash over the various failings of Big Tech. Much of the ire of policymakers has been focused on content moderation choices—what content gets left up or taken down. But arguably there hasn’t been much focus on the underlying design of social media platforms.What are the default settings? How are the interfaces set up? How do the recommendation algorithms work? And what about transparency? What should the companies disclose to the public and to researchers? Are they hiding the ball?In recent years, policymakers have started to take these issues head on. In the U.S. more than 75 bills have been introduced at the state and federal level since 2023—these bills target the design and operation of algorithms, and more than a dozen have been passed into law. Last year, New York and California passed laws attempting to keep children away from “addictive feeds.” Other states in 2025 have introduced similar bills. And there’s a lawsuit from 42 attorney generals against Meta over its design choices. While Congress hasn’t done much, if anything, to regulate social media, states are clearly filling that void—or at least trying to.So what would make social media better, or better for you? Recently, a group of academic researchers organized by the Knight Georgetown Institute put out a paper called Better Feeds: Algorithms that Put People First They outline a series of recommendations that they argue would lead to better outcomes. Evan is joined by Alissa Cooper, co-author of the paper and Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute. She previously spent over a decade at Cisco Systems, including in engineering roles. Her work at KGI has focused on how platforms can design algorithms that prioritize long-term user value rather than short-term engagement metrics.

When it comes to AI policy, and AI governance, Washington is arguably sending mixed signals. Overregulation is a concern—but so is underregulation. Stakeholders across the political spectrum and business world have a lot of conflicting thoughts. More export controls on AI chips, or less. More energy production, but what about the climate? Less liability, or more liability. Safety testing, or not? “Prevent catastrophic risks”, or “don’t focus on unlikely doom scenarios.” While Washington looks unlikely to pass comprehensive AI legislation, states have tried, and failed. In a prior episode, we talked about SB 1047, CA’s ill-fated effort. Colorado recently saw its Democratic governor take the unusual step of delaying implementation of a new AI bill in his signing letter, due to  concerns it would stifle innovation the state wants to attract.But are we even asking the right questions? What problem are we trying to solve? Should we be less focused on whether or not AI will make a bioweapon, or more focused on how to make life easier and better for people in a world that looks very different from the one we inhabit today? Is safety versus innovation a distraction, a false binary? Is there a third option, a different way of thinking about how to govern AI? And if today’s governments aren’t fit to regulate AI, is private governance the way forward?Evan is joined by Andrew Freedman, is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Fathom, a nonprofit building solutions society needs to thrive in an AI-driven world. Prior to Fathom, Andrew served as Colorado’s first Director of Marijuana Coordination, often referred to as the state’s "Cannabis Czar.” You can read Fathom’s proposal for AI governance here, and former FAI fellow Dean Ball’s writing on the topic here.

In this week’s episode of The Dynamist, guest host Jon Askonas is joined by Katherine Boyle, (General Partner at a16z) and Neil Chilson (Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute), to tackle a critical yet often overlooked question: How is technology reshaping the American family? As tech giants like TikTok and Instagram come under scrutiny for their effects on children’s mental health, and remote work continues to redefine domestic life, the conversation around technology’s role in family dynamics has never been more urgent.Katherine shares insights from her recent keynote at the American Enterprise Institute, highlighting how the core objective of technological innovation, which she calls "American Dynamism," should be empowering the family rather than centralizing state control. Neil provides a fresh perspective on how decentralized systems and emergent technologies can enhance—not hinder—family autonomy and resilience. Amid rising debates about homeschooling, screen time, and the shift toward a remote-first lifestyle, the guests discuss whether tech-driven changes ultimately strengthen or undermine families as society's fundamental institution.Together, they explore the possibility of a new era in which technology revitalizes family autonomy, reshapes education, and reignites productive home economies.

Lina Khan, a Columbia Law School professor and former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, stands at the forefront of the antitrust conversation. She reflects on her contentious tenure as critics and allies alike weighed in on her bold moves against tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon. Khan delves into the shifting philosophies of antitrust law and the challenges of regulating big tech in a rapidly evolving market. With political tensions brewing, she explores the future of competition policy and the surge of interest among younger advocates.