Ok, this is fascinating (and very useful). "The Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook" is a joint effort (complete with micro-site) by the Foundation for American Innovation, American Compass, The Institute for Progress, and NAIA Foundation to compile a set of proposals on, well, take a guess.

It includes 27 proposals total, split into three sections, "Industrial Power," "National Security," and "Frontier Science & Technology," from luminaries including Oren Cass, Julius Krein, Thomas Hochman, Sam Hammond, Caleb Watney, Stuart Buck, and more.

The front page includes "declarations of urgency" from public and private sector leaders, which is a very interesting touch. Representative sample: "America's defense industrial base is in crisis. If we don't rebuild it now, we will lose the ability to deter and win wars — full stop" from Trae Stephens, chairman of Anduril.

Topics include reforming NEPA, using the DOE's LPO to advance nuclear (something we have mentioned before), "building a techno-industrial workforce," specific policies addressing shipbuilding, medical manufacturing, minerals, AI chips, and more. The "frontier science" part includes a very interesting proposal on "securing access to foreign data flows for AI," essentially getting US allies to ensure their data doesn't go to China but instead is shared with the US, and reforming various public science bodies like NIH and the National Semiconductor Technology Center.

More than any particular proposal, though, (and we do encourage you perusing all of them if you have any interest at all in this area), what we want to salute is the overall spirit of the thing. It seems to be at the exact right sweet spot between ambition and practicality. These are policies that can be implemented tomorrow, but would certainly have direct and immediate impact. And though it doesn't try to pass itself off as libertarian, it also eschews theological debate about free trade vs protectionism, but instead takes for granted that in at least a few key areas, namely national security and breakthrough new technologies, the US government has a role in fostering greater vitality.

All in all, a highly successful effort and we sincerely hope it resonates.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Tax — Well, President Trump has been tweeting up a storm as we were writing this newsletter, as he is wont to do. In this case, a very puzzling response to reports that he encouraged Speaker Johnson to include a high-income tax increase in the reconciliation package. "Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do." Make of it what you will! In the meantime, here's a good backgrounder from Semafor on the whole higher-taxes-for-the-rich issue. Our $.02: the vibe of the Party is changing, the electorate of the party is changing, and Congress needs to find every penny of revenue it can; at the same time, the Republican Party has so much invested in the brand of "people who lower your taxes" that it feels very dangerous to go against that.

#Tariffs — Speaking of, President Trump has also tweeted that an 80% tariff on China "seems right" but that it's "up to" Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has been put in charge of the China trade negotiations. Ok then!

#Tariffs — Meanwhile, make of it what you will: "Many small and medium [American] manufacturers are experiencing a surge in demand and are preparing to ramp up production and hire new workers," reports Floyd Buford of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

#LGBTQ — Important: until now, nobody was tracking how often males are competing in girls' sports. The people at HeCheated.org built the most comprehensive database they could using publicly-available data. And it turns out that a phenomenon we were told was anecdotal and rare is actually widespread and systemic. Thousands upon thousands of males are competing against females in various sports all over America.

#DEI — More bombshell reporting from the Free Beacon's Aaron Sibarium: "In March, the Trump administration said it would investigate whether UCLA medical school's admissions office discriminates based on race. Two weeks later, the med school promised to do just that, telling students in writing that it would pick 'BIPOC' admissions officers."

#Reconciliation — Politico: "House Republicans plan major SNAP food aid overhaul in Trump megabill" Unsurprising, it's a low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing spending.

#Climate — Well, this seems like one green issue worth caring about: apparently, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Cities, "all of the biggest US cities are sinking," yes, "sinking," mainly due to overuse of groundwater. What's more, different parts sink at different rates, with the kind of consequences you can imagine.

#NEPA — At Commonplace, Christopher Koopman and Josh T. Smith make the case for NEPA abolition.

#Antitrust — The US leads, other countries follow. From Law360: "Britain's competition watchdog said Wednesday that it has decided to take an initial look at the approximately $13 billion merger of U.S.-based marketing communications giants Omnicom and Interpublic, as the mega-deal faces scrutiny in the U.S. as well."

#Immigration #Judiciary — From Dale Wilcox of the Immigration Reform Law Institute: "The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the President’s inherent authority to exclude aliens, and ‘inherent’ clearly means he may exercise it even when he is not guided by a specific statute." Seems right to us. Hopefully the rest of the judiciary will listen; eventually the Supreme Court will have to rule.

Friday Essays

From Park MacDougald at Tablet: "Astroturfing MAGA." MacDougald wonders "aloud about how exactly a coterie of lifelong Democrats, Koch-network operatives, Iran lobbyists, and Qatar PR representatives came to speak for MAGA."

The UK just legalized Canada-style euthanasia, France is in the process of doing so, and there is a renewed movement in the US at the state level to follow along. In this context, do not miss this gut-wrenching original reported essay at UnHerd, by Alexander Raikin, a visiting fellow in the bioethics and American democracy program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, on a father's battle to save his autistic daughter from the Canadian death machine.

Two worrying essays about AI last week: From New York Magazine: "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College." Not only is everyone using ChatGPT for homework assignments, but students don't seem to particularly have a problem with it, and professors are helpless. Meanwhile, Miles Klee at Rollong Stone reports that "people are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies." A hint of what's going on: "Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. 'He would listen to the bot over me,' she says. 'He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon,' she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as 'spiral starchild' and 'river walker.' 'It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking,' she says. 'Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God — and then that he himself was God.'"

Ross Douthat's new podcast, "Interesting Times," is clearly turning into a must-listen for anyone who cares about, well, what anybody subscribed to this newsletter cares about. Douthat recently interviewed Jonathan Keeperman, founder of the vital new boutique publishing house Passage Press, publisher of both classics such as Ernst Jünger and of new right authors such as Steve Sailer, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Land, about this new emerging right-wing culture, which, for the first time in anybody's living memory, has made the right cool and transgressive and cutting-edge. Keeperman then followed up with an article on his Substack on his views on what makes for "right-wing art." All very interesting.

Speaking of Ross Douthat, you may appreciate this discussion in the New York Times, published right before the election of His Holiness Leo XIV, where "three conservative Catholics" meditate on the past and future of the Church. The Catholics in question are Douthat, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Dan Hitchens.

At Commonplace, Robert Bellafiore of the Foundation for American Innovation reviews the important new book by Palantir CEO Alex Karp, titled "The Technological Republic." A preview: "The book is a full-throated indictment of the fallen ambitions, competence, and verve of America’s technologists and statesman. Karp […] think[s] that our leaders in politics and tech have become, in short, losers—effete rule-followers who undertake projects without purpose, mindlessly parrot the shibboleths of out-of-touch elites, and ignore their duty to pursue the national interest."