Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a frontier AI lab which likes to market itself as the most "safety-conscious" of its peers, has just come out with an op-ed in the NYT arguing against the 10 year ban on state AI regulation that's part of the Big Beautiful Bill.

Anyone who's read their Adam Smith (or other public choice theorist of their choice) should reach for their handgun whenever a CEO in an industry asks to be regulated more.

As Adam Thierer of R Street and Kevin Frazier of the UT Austin School of Law have argued, the moratorium is a good idea.

More than 1,000 AI-related bills were introduced in the US in the first five months of 2025—the vast majority of them state bills. This regulatory tsunami threatens to create exactly the kind of fragmented marketplace that the Commerce Clause was designed to prevent. The idea that an AI developer must navigate not one regulatory environment, but 50, boggles the mind. As ever with such regulations, they would primarily hurt smaller innovators that lack the vast legal resources of tech giants.

From a constitutional perspective, it seems clear that the Commerce Clause was intended for just such situations. There are also more recent legal precedents, on telecoms and the internet: the Telecommunications Act of 1996 specified that "[n]o State or local statute or regulation, or other State or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service." The law included other specific preemptions of state and local regulation. Similarly, the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998 (made permanent in 2016) harmonized the tax regime applying to the internet at the Federal level.

The issue is not just economic, of course, but one of national security. Yes, it's a cliché, but sometimes clichés are clichés for good reasons: the US is in a potentially-existential race with China to develop frontier AI.

Of note, under the proposal being considered by Congress, existing state laws protecting consumers of technology services such as data breach laws and laws requiring reasonable data security would continue to apply and provide basic protection to consumers. General laws, such as consumer protection laws, would still apply to AI systems if they apply equally to comparable non-AI systems. The moratorium targets only AI-specific regulations that single out these technologies for special treatment.

Another very important reason for such a moratorium has to do with the nature of what we're dealing with. AI is changing every day. Advocates of the moratorium refer to it as a learning period, and they're right. We simply don't yet know very well what the main risks and pitfalls associated with AI are. Policymaking in this area, right now, is glaringly evidence-free. Putting in place a moratorium while Congress, Federal agencies, and the public at large develop a comprehensive national framework for regulating AI seems like a much smarter approach.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Immigration — People are already calling it the "Muslim Ban 2.0": President Trump has ordered a full ban on travelers entering US from Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Chad, Libya, Somalia, and a partial ban on travelers from Sierra Leone and Turkmenistan.

#BigBeautifulBill — Thomas J. Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research makes the case for getting rid of the IRA energy tax credits in the Senate bill.

#Budget — Jordan Haring of American Action Forum has a good summary of President Trump's $9.4 billion rescission request. $9.4 billion may not sound like a lot, but every bit helps these days… The request mostly codifies DOGE cuts, with most of the money coming from foreign aid and contributions to international organizations. And, of course, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

#Tariffs #Budget — CBO has scored the Trump tariffs: $2.8 trillion over ten years. That's…not nothing.

#Tariffs #TheEconomy — …But meanwhile: "Procter & Gamble to Cut 7,000 Jobs Amid Tariff Uncertainty"

#Tariffs — And here's another: the NY Fed has a report out on whether businesses are absorbing the tariffs or passing them on to their customers: "most businesses passed on at least some of the higher tariffs to their customers." Not the 1-for-1 tax that ideological free traders talked about, but, nevertheless, a hit to consumers' wallets.

#DEI #Equality #BillOfRights — You've probably already seen it, but the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that anti-white discrimination is also discrimination. It's a stunning fact about the DEI regime that this wasn't already law.

#DEI — Speaking of, did you know that when it comes to combat readiness, men outperform women? Good article from Will Thibeau and Carson Ruch making the case for getting women out of combat.

#Labor — Interesting potential addition to the Big Beautiful Bill: the Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallets Act, sponsored by Sen. Joni Ernst and Rep. Scott Perry. It seeks to punish government employee unions for a practice called "official time", by which union members are allowed to do union work while on the clock. The bill would force unions to pay back the official time they consume, plus the value of other perks they receive, such as free government office space. We are intrigued (though also moderately skeptical) about the potential for a pro-labor GOP, but one issue on which there can be no debate is government unions.

#Reg #Transportation — "CEI's three-point blueprint to DOT deregulation." Just what it says on the tin. And they're good ideas.

#Tax — Jason Sorens over at the American Institute for Economic Research has a good explainer on the economics of property taxes.

#SecondAmendment — Supreme Court rules unanimously that gun manufacturers cannot be held liable for gun crime (no kidding).