Explain to Shane

Cable companies are now offering mobile service, wireless carriers are competing for home broadband customers, and satellite providers are even expanding their offerings. As these historically distinct markets converge, policymakers face new questions about competition and connectivity. What regulatory reforms would help bring broadband to unserved communities while keeping service affordable? Why does access to unlicensed spectrum...

“American Dynamism” is the idea that by retooling workers, rebuilding our country’s industrial backbone can take a decade rather than generations. In this episode, we explore what the practical requirements of this work would be. How can commercialized nuclear energy help meet rising energy demand across critical industries? What’s the most pressing issue in the American regulatory environment? And if Americ...

On a global scale, we have seen a rise in the development and enactment of legislation that bans minors from using social media to keep them safe. But what does early evidence of these bills tell us about whether they are working as intended? What's the case for age-appropriate spaces and content instead? And should chatbots be regulated similarly?

To discuss this, Shane is joined by Josh Tabish, senior director for Canada at the C...

Artificial intelligence is transforming the legal and tax sectors of business. However, neither the legal nor the tax establishments may be ready for what’s coming. There's a real tension here. On one side, lawyers are using AI to draft filings and manage their work, and some firms are building their own AI systems. On the other hand, the legal world remains slow to adopt this new tool. What does that look like in practice? W...

Employees at several leading AI companies are asking the US government and international bodies to slow the development of frontier models. Doing so would put governments in the position of deciding when new models are safe enough to release. Yet policymakers also warn that the United States must move faster than China and that prerelease reviews could stifle innovation. Are these two goals in tension with one another? Can existing...

Until recently, concerns about AI agents conducting autonomous cyber operations were largely theoretical. The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident in July changed that, while Anthropic’s Mythos exposed software vulnerabilities buried for decades. Together, these incidents have forced policymakers to reconsider how governments and companies prepare for AI-enabled cyber threats. Can the federal government and private sector keep ...

Americans rely on wireless connections for nearly every part of modern life, and demand for the airwaves that make those connections possible is only growing. But much of the nation’s spectrum remains accessible by federal agencies under a system approaching its 100th anniversary. How can the United States free up more spectrum for commercial use? Can the military rely more heavily on commercial networks without compromising ...

New frontier AI models are changing the cybersecurity landscape. As advanced systems become more capable of finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities, the federal government is trying to determine how to protect critical infrastructure and maintain national security. The administration’s June executive order on AI and cybersecurity offers one answer, but it also raises several harder questions. Can the government keep u...

Artificial intelligence is being integrated into nearly every industry, but how is Congress using AI? As policymakers and their staff work to serve their constituents, can AI be used as a tool to modernize legislative operations, better equip staff, and strengthen our democratic processes? Congress has a unique opportunity to embrace this emerging technology, and failing to do so may leave it behind.

To discuss this, Shane is joined...

There is an invisible resource that powers our smartphones and connects our devices: spectrum airwaves. But regulations governing these airwaves were set decades ago, long before the age of smartphones and autonomous vehicles. With technology changing at a rapid pace, are these regulations for this finite resource outdated? What is the growing importance of airwave spectrum in an economy that is increasingly wireless? And what does...

Information technology and digital services are a rapidly changing sector operating in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. International bodies have struggled to fast-track standards for the digital services industry, and major companies have adopted their own. These trends risk creating a more fragmented world in which digital trust and safety suffer. To protect universal human rights, companies and governments need to...

As the digitization of the economy accelerates, the friction points facing the adoption of cryptocurrency are becoming more evident. The benefits of on-ramping to stablecoin are obvious: faster and more efficient money exchanges and improved cross-border transfers. Complicating adoption, however, are the challenges regulators face in assessing the risks associated with blockchain and defining the technology. Add to that the weight ...

National security is becoming inextricably linked with cloud computing and AI—and this year’s Munich Security Conference solidified that fact. International statesmen met with technology leaders to discuss cloud infrastructure resilience, AI and automated defense systems, and the evolving dynamic between digital sovereignty and interoperability. But how will defense institutions balance the pressure to automate quickly ...

As artificial intelligence becomes a key part of national infrastructure, developers across the United States are rushing to build large data centers in many regions. Many of these areas haven’t seen this level of industrial growth in decades, and these projects appear to bring the promise of jobs and economic growth to communities that need it. Despite the potential for renewed prosperity, local residents are opposing data c...

The GPS is essential to modern navigation, communication, and critical infrastructure. However, the United States faces serious threats to GPS technology, many of which are rarely discussed publicly. In addition to the looming threat from Russian and Chinese weaponry, increasing orbital debris and severe space weather have the potential to damage or destroy American satellites, causing a complete collapse of our navigational system...

Innovations in drone technology have expanded their usefulness and made drones increasingly present in everyday life. Despite this progress, key limitations such as short battery life and limited payload capacity have hindered their full potential in critical infrastructure. That reality is beginning to shift. Recent breakthroughs in long-endurance flight are pushing drones beyond these limits and into entirely new possibilities. A...

With the advent of the digital age, individuals rely on countless personal devices, each one expanding their exposure to cybercrime. Missing one or two software updates may seem harmless, but this common negligence leaves us vulnerable to cyberattacks. With the number of individuals falling prey to cybercrime increasing on a yearly basis, we must ask: Why have established cybersecurity measures failed to halt or slow down the activ...

As the increased use of artificial intelligence necessitates connectivity, it will continue to become inextricably linked to the digital network landscape. When people talk about artificial intelligence, they usually focus on algorithms, chips, or data centers. But there’s a less visible piece that determines whether any of it works in the real world: digital networks. AI doesn’t live in one place. It moves. It learns. ...

One of the most important cybersecurity laws in the country quietly expired last October with no sign of reauthorization on the horizon. Instead, the conflation between the 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has led to a political standstill that will only have negative impacts on American cybersecurity. What implications will not reauthorizing CISA 2015 have on natio...