Jun
4
2026

All Running Out of the Same Playbook

… and that playbook seems to be referenced here.

I imagine Elizabeth Nolan Brown asking in her best Dirty Harry voice: Do you feel lucky, punk? The question posed in her latest "Sex & Tech" newsletter is more specific: Do you trust the government to control AI?.

Trump's executive order on "Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security," issued yesterday, mainly focuses on shoring up the "cyber defense" of federal systems and establishing processes to detect and patch vulnerabilities. It also instructs the National Security Agency and officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to "develop and maintain a classified benchmarking process to assess the advanced cyber capabilities of AI models and determine the threshold at which an AI model" is deemed a "frontier model."And it would institute a voluntary program through which AI developers could share new models with the federal government for both assessment and cybersecurity purposes.

But—this is important—it explicitly states that nothing in it "shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models."

Is it perfect? No. It "wisely stops short of calling for mandatory government licensing, but leaves plenty of room for future regulatory overreach," said Jessica Melugin, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's (CEI) Center for Technology and Innovation.

So it's at least better than what Bernie Sanders is demanding. That's a pretty low bar to clear.

James Freeman is slightly less impressed than ENB: Trump and AI.

This column recently lauded President Donald Trump’s deregulatory zeal and warned that his extremely wise decision to reject Biden policy and endorse the freedom of Americans to develop artificial-intelligence technologies was in danger of being reversed. Sadly the president is now suddenly looking less zealous.

What's the problem?

This is exactly the risk in this market where the U.S. is the leader and which promises enormous potential to improve productivity and raise living standards. AI is now vulnerable to Washington regulators who have a long, sad history of imposing costly mandates that were never enacted in law, never explicitly approved by Congress. What are the companies supposed to do when government officials respond to each new model with a list of bureaucratic suggestions allegedly intended to improve the software?

To repeat for the nth time. There's nothing wrong with AI that Uncle Stupid can't make worse.

Also of note:

  • Betteridge's Law of Headlines confirmed once again. Varonique de Rugy wonders, rhetorically: Will Single-Payer Health Care Champions Ever Offer Something Credible?

    Single-payer health care has been the progressive left's signature domestic demand for four decades. It has generated presidential campaigns, mass rallies, congressional cosponsors and an inexhaustible supply of Twitter righteousness. What it has never generated once is a workable legislative proposal.

    Brookings Institution economist Jessica Riedl has spent years waiting for one. Her challenge is simple: Show us a progressive bill that specifies (a) a provider payment system that actually saves money under America's existing, already expensive health infrastructure, and (b) a financing mechanism to replace the roughly $32 trillion in private premiums and out-of-pocket costs that would need to be covered by federal taxes over the next decade.

    Despite hundreds of legislative proposals and multiple presidential campaigns built around the issue, no one has met the challenge.

    I'm sure Jessica is not holding her breath.

  • I've done something similar in Monopoly. As described by Jeffrey Blehar: George Santos Bets Against Himself. (archive.today link) You may remember George was furnished a literal "Get Out of Jail Free" card by President Trump last year. Alas:

    Some fraudsters make comebacks, but I doubt there will be any such for George Santos. Because as it turns out, character is usually destiny. We discovered yesterday that Santos is now being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trade Commission for . . . you guessed it, fraud! Specifically, insider trading on the notorious political betting market Kalshi.

    You might be wondering how Santos could be an “insider” in any event, given that he’s an ex-con living in New York. Well, one thing he knows for sure is himself. And in a brazen con job, he first announced that he would be attending January’s State of the Union address. Since Kalshi brags about having “markets in everything,” even the utterly trivial, there was a lot of money flowing around that night, with bets placed on which political celebrities would be in the House gallery. With his Twitter confirmation, the “odds” of his attendance soared in the market. And then Santos secretly bet heavily against himself attending. Needless to say, he wasn’t there (on Twitter he claimed “airport delays” had prevented him from making it). And he cleaned up with the deception, until Kalshi noticed to whom it was paying out tens of thousands of dollars.

    Insider trading scandals on these new political gambling markets are now a genuinely scandalous fact of life. They are also incredibly easy to conceal and difficult to police. Which is why I love George Santos for being so howlingly, stupidly obvious in his fraudulence. It’s downright heartwarming in a way. Did he not think that regulators would inquire into the identity of the one guy in the market who suddenly bet against Santos appearing? Did he not think Kalshi would recognize what was going on?

    Pun Salad Public Service Announcement: You are unlikely to win at prediction markets.