Kill the Kill Switch!

Kill the Kill Switch!

Back in November 2021, Congress quietly added a clause to the sprawling “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” that would make Orwell blush. Section 24220 authorizes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to require that every new passenger car include “advanced drunk-and-impaired-driving prevention technology.” The provision is sold as a way to save lives, but alleges to do so by commanding vehicles to monitor drivers and refuse to operate when the software suspects impairment. In other words, AI will determine whether or not you can drive should you buy a new year...

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A Palantir Manifesto

A Palantir Manifesto

Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America's future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the "soft" influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the...

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Another Trump Flip Flop: From ‘Kill FISA’ to ‘Clean Renewal’

Another Trump Flip Flop: From ‘Kill FISA’ to ‘Clean Renewal’

With its April 20 deadline for congressional renewal looming, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is back in the spotlight. The provision, first adopted in 2008 as a part of the FISA Amendments Act as an update to the original 1978 Act, allows U.S. intelligence agencies to target “non-US persons located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information” as a response to perceived technology gaps exposed in the years after 9/11. It achieves this by compelling American telecom companies to collect intelligence on foreign targets and turning over...

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Regime Uncertainty in Wartime America

Regime Uncertainty in Wartime America

The absolute state of America in its late-stage empire era is perfectly illustrated by the weekly, sometimes daily, cultural event of checking social media to see what unhinged post the president has left for us this time. This week’s installment, as the latest deadline issued to the Iranians for total capitulation to American and Israeli demands, reads like an open confession to international courts of war crimes. Thankfully, like a number of deadlines before, it passed without further escalation. On the contrary, Donald Trump announced yet another delay to potential attacks on Iranian...

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Two Primary Elections for the Soul of ‘America First’

Two Primary Elections for the Soul of ‘America First’

Political slogans are cheap. Governing is not. “America First” is not a bumper-sticker philosophy. It is a testable claim about priorities: How much debt will we pile up, how many wars will we drift into, and how often will elected officials treat Congress as a ceremonial prop rather than a constitutional branch. Midterm elections are where slogans go to trial. Primaries, especially, are where interests that cannot reliably win a general election try to win the nomination. They do it with money, with media saturation, and with the oldest trick in politics: framing obedience as unity. This...

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How ‘Real’ Is the Iran War?

How ‘Real’ Is the Iran War?

Over the last week, the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States has played out in a second theater that never sleeps: the timeline of X/Twitter. The feed is saturated with claims about battlefield damage, casualty numbers, “secret” losses, and the health or death of leaders. The problem is that much of the evidence people think they are judging is no longer anchored in reality. Independent researchers and reporters have documented a surge of AI-generated, mislabeled, and recycled “war footage” circulating widely on X/Twitter, including fake missile strike visuals and staged-looking...

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The Tea Party Stumbled So That MAGA Could Fall

The Tea Party Stumbled So That MAGA Could Fall

Political movements often begin as revolts against entrenched power, only to be absorbed by the very institutions they sought to challenge. The pattern is familiar in American political history. Grassroots insurgencies ignite public enthusiasm, mobilize voters around neglected issues, and briefly threaten the ruling consensus. Yet over time they are either neutralized or transformed into instruments of the existing political order. Two movements defined the political awakening of many Americans in the early twenty-first century: the Tea Party and the MAGA movement. Both promised a revolt...

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Murray Rothbard, Mr. Libertarian, Turns 100

Murray Rothbard, Mr. Libertarian, Turns 100

On March 2, 1926, Murray Rothbard was born in the Bronx, New York, an only child of immigrant parents. His father worked as a chemist and his mother encouraged his voracious reading. Early interests in history and logic foreshadowed a career in which he relentlessly scrutinized economic models, historical narratives and political myths. Rothbard enrolled at Columbia University at sixteen and earned a B.A. in mathematics and economics, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He completed a Ph.D. under Joseph Dorfman with a dissertation on The Panic of 1819, showing how an early U.S. central bank triggered...

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