The Dynamist

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.

BlueSky was once a research initiative within Jack Dorsey’s Twitter aimed at decentralizing the architecture or the platform social media writ large. Today, BlueSky is an independent platform with remarkable momentum. Following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and subsequent policy shifts, BlueSky has experienced unprecedented growth, expanding from 3 million to 30 million users since February 2024.That “X-odus” of frustrated progressives to BlueSky has perhaps inadvertently shaped public perception of it as "Lib Twitter"—a characterization reinforced by its prominent progressive voices and more restrictive community moderation tools. However, this political framing obscures BlueSky's fundamental innovation: the AT Protocol, which reimagines social media as a decentralized ecosystem rather than a platform controlled by a master algorithm ruled by a CEO.Unlike conventional social networks, BlueSky's architectural philosophy challenges the centralized control model by introducing a "marketplace of algorithms" where users select or create their own content curation systems. Imagine a feed that skews left, one that skews right, or one that avoids politics altogether.This "algorithmic choice" approach could represent the biggest challenge yet to the centralized engagement machines that have dominated—and arguably degraded—our digital discourse. But can Bluesky outgrow its political bubbles and fulfill its techno-utopian promise? Or will it remain just another partisan bunker in our increasingly fragmented online world?Evan and Luke are joined by Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky. 

AI has emerged as a critical geopolitical battleground where Washington and Beijing are racing not just for economic advantage, but military dominance. Despite these high stakes, there's surprising little consensus on how—or whether—to respond to frontier AI development.The polarized landscape features techno-optimists battling AI safety advocates, with the formerdismissing the latter as "doomers" who exaggerate existential risks. Meanwhile, AI business leaders face criticism for potentially overstating their companies' capabilities to attract investors and secure favorable regulations that protect their market positions.Democrats and civil rights advocates warn that focusing solely on catastrophic risks versus economic prosperity distracts from immediate harms like misinformation, algorithmic discrimination, and synthetic media abuse. U.S. regulatory efforts have struggled, with California's SB 1047 failing last year and Trump repealing Biden's AI Executive Order on inauguration day. Even the future of the U.S. government's AI Safety Institute remains uncertain under the new administration.With a new administration in Washington, important questions linger: How should government approach AI's national security implications? Can corporate profit motives align with safer outcomes? And if the U.S. and China are locked in an AI arms race, is de-escalation possible, or are we heading toward a digital version of Mutually Assured Destruction?Joining me to explore these questions are Dan Hendrycks, AI researcher and Director of the Center for AI Safety and co-author of "Superintelligence Strategy," a framework for navigating advanced AI from a national security and geopolitical perspective, and FAI's own Sam Hammond, Senior Economist and AI policy expert.