www.afr.com/policy/econo.... “..while painful for businesses, these costs may be less salient to a politician looking for a way to “do something” without hitting the underlying cash balance. No one wants to be the heartless bastard who admits that there are no easy solutions to the hard problems.”

www.afr.com/politics/fed.... “A Machiavellian moment speaks to a crisis of confidence and the sense our political order and institutions are not equal to today’s ..challenges..the term derives from Niccolo Machiavelli’s..diagnosis of a political community’s vulnerability to decay and decline.”

“While the price of Brent crude..rose from $72 on Feb. 27 to nearly $120.. solar energy emerged as a viable lifeline..The cost of utility-scale solar has fallen 90% since 2010, 41 % cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative..within reach for more countries than ever.” HT @politico.com

www.afr.com/technology/p.... “..not an obscure theological spat..a moral argument. Do the people building the technology get to set its ethical limits? Or do the rest of us – workers, citizens, parliaments, churches, unions –get a say? Will human oversight and human empathy prevail.” #ai #regulation

Is this New Labour tribute act just a Keir Starmer farewell tour? www.thetimes.com/article/3113.... “..they speak in cliché..tired mantras about “change”, “working people”..unable to work off script..no one is listening.” The actors still speaking their lines, the audience has left the theatre..

www.afr.com/policy/healt.... “Our regulators have made us become performative. They have made us elevate ritual over rigour, style over substance, and marketing over meaning. But academic institutions are meant to be the opposite of that.” #highrered #universities #regulation

open.substack.com/pub/p4sc4l/p.... “..a clear picture emerges: Palantir offers genuine tactical advantages that come packaged with strategic dependencies structurally incompatible with democratic accountability, data sovereignty, and human rights protection.” Yes, but wonton that? #ai #palantir

www.afr.com/technology/a.... “If these tools are going to be so powerful, we should not have to rely on the grace and favour of American developers to give our governments and industries access to prepare and protect our industries and infrastructure for the coming crisis.” Inclined to agree…#ai

restofworld.org/2026/ai-opti.... “Building trust in institutions, providing skilling opportunities for the population, and passing laws for the responsible development and deployment of AI is perhaps a more surefire way to assuage some concerns about AI. Just ask Singapore..” #ai #trust

www.flinders.edu.au/research/art.... I failed chemistry at school but even I can sense something exciting about this kind of “basic” research breakthrough…the sort presumably whose patient, persistent investment of time, money and expertise is always hard to pin down in terms of value and impact

beam.org/en-au/blog/b.... “Almost 100,000 frontline workers in five countries - across social care, health, employability, housing, and justice - rely on it..also means doing this work responsibly, with a deep understanding of the realities that frontline teams face...” #beamnotes #ai #productivity

open.substack.com/pub/persuasi.... “It’s not a good thing when the world’s most powerful country is guided not by clear ideas, but by the personal needs of a single leader. There is no such thing as a Trump Doctrine, and consequently, no current basis for any kind of world order.” #freefall

www.afr.com/technology/y.... “No one is asking to stop the machines.. We just need those in authority to be candid about what this new world means for us. To articulate what a future economy might look like and how we might fit into it.” #ai #ecnomicimpact

www.afr.com/policy/econo.... “Despite the recent news of a temporary ceasefire, some damage is already done, and the downside risks remain elevated,” the fund cautioned”. The downside risks remain elevated… Is there a more antiseptic and bloodless way of suggesting we’re in free fall so watch out???

www.afr.com/world/middle.... “..the majority of scholarship ..points toward a pathway that is internally led and grounded in sustained civil resistance, organised social noncooperation, and carefully calibrated forms of external support that prioritise accountability and protection.” #iran

www.afr.com/policy/econo.... “..we should not assume that technological advances will automatically deliver better lives or a better society without active steps by humans to shape the technology and the institutions that surround it. The future of AI..is ..an exercise in design.” #ai #regulation

open.substack.com/pub/indyjoha.... “How do ordinary people, institutions of care, civic infrastructures.. new coalitions back forces that can build a different future?..How do we construct institutions that are capable of holding complexity, asymmetry, pluralism without collapsing into extraction.”

open.substack.com/pub/broligar... . “The press is under a coordinated, global assault... Stop…thinking tech companies will save you, they never have and never will and answer the sodding questions when journalists put them to you.” Answer the questions @theguardian.com @tortoisemedia.bsky.social ??

www.themandarin.com.au/309873-faste... #policyinnovation in Canberra 30 March. Another step: “.policy innovation has been swamped by the speed, intensity, and connectedness in a world whose digital, data- and AI-infused metabolism runs at a pace uncomfortable for settled rhythms of policymaking.”

www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-t.... . “What the revelations show, he says, is that the UK has “given a private company such detailed access to our national security data that they can themselves infer things that they just aren’t supposed to know. For whose benefit is this?”

www.afr.com/technology/a.... “Ever since the capacity of AI to outstrip human capabilities has become clear, the world has been grappling with variations on this dilemma: the technology seems both too potent to pass up and too dangerous to embrace wholeheartedly.” # ai # regulation

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/public-.... “Public AI policy should increase the degree of publicness in AI systems rather than seek fully public ones. This means prioritising interventions across the AI stack that generate public value and minimise dependencies on commercial providers.” #publicai #ai

ssir.org/articles/ent.... “We are entering a pivotal evolutionary moment. The defining challenge is not whether artificial intelligence will advance..but whether we will intentionally cultivate the RQ that makes those advances serve human flourishing, rather than undermine it.” #intelligence #ai

substack.com/inbox/post/1... The question for progressive politics.. is whether parties that bear the left’s name,and the industries that serve them..will continue refining the Brahmin project for an educated minority while communities they represented find their political expression elsewhere.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202.... “U.S. govt has..countless dedicated and talented civil servants who find ways to accomplish great things. But..this government is riddled with systems and structures that make it difficult for the most effective individual to quickly and creatively deliver.”

Brazil arrived at the India AI Impact Summit with a clear mission to reinforce the need for digital sovereignty and multilateralism, but ran into a harsh reality, Tech Policy Press fellow Tatiana Dias writes.

open.substack.com/pub/rainerka.... “Democracy did not begin as an abstract constitutional arrangement. It began as a feature of urban life: an attempt to govern collective life in a bounded place, among strangers, under conditions of conflict and scarcity.”

rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/regulat.... “…responsibility for public decisions remains clearly located within governing institutions, even as AI systems become more capable.” #ai #techpolicy

www.afr.com/politics/it-.... “Believability is often mistaken for warmth or polish. It is neither. Believability is built from alignment – between belief, behaviour and communication. Hanson has that alignment in abundance.” #paulinehanson #auspol

www.afr.com/technology/t.... “Let’s be clear; this is outrageous…most people will get their media stories from AI and Australian media businesses will be expected to incur the cost of producing these stories without the revenue to cover these costs. This is clearly untenable.” #ai #regulation

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe.... “Fascism doesn’t require genius to achieve power.It requires vacancy: an absence of courage, of imagination, of commitment to truth..instead of moral clarity, our political class – incompetent at politics and incapable of leadership – offers yet more managerial noise.”

www.scientificamerican.com/blog/voices/.... “But let’s not credit Hardin for that common insight. Hardin wasn’t making an informed scientific case. Instead, he was using concerns about environmental scarcity to justify racial discrimination.”

Another in the series of invaluable posts explaining the US extreme right, & here also considering whether it could consolidate power after Trump. bsky.app/profile/samf...

www.govai.gov.au/chief-ai-off.... “They will need to adopt many of the new dimensions of leadership for the digital age – architects of trust, chief sense makers, to reflexively experiment and learn, to protect legitimacy as assiduously as they chase productivity, to connect change with purpose.”

www.afr.com/policy/econo.... “..those abandoning the Coalition are motivated not only by negative feelings towards Ley and the Coalition breakup but also by anti-establishment sentiment, lack of confidence in the political system, and..that the major parties are Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” # auspol

samf.substack.com/p/power-to-t.... “Big Local’s impact hints at the power of civic capacity... We lament the downward spirals that blight communities -factory closes, people lose hop..feeds further decline..these spirals can also go upward -confidence can lead to small wins, build more confidence.”

www.innovationaus.com/govts-consul.... “Many of the entries do not include the details recommended by the Senate inquiry,like a meaningful description of the work being delivered, only one of the three biannual disclosures has been in an easily assessable format.” Could do better… #consultants

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “Texas A&M now believes Plato doesn’t belong in an introductory philosophy course.” Always thought he was a bit overrated. Good cal. All very reassuring.Here we were worrying about the end of higher education as we know it. #highereducation #universities

open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu.... “But there's a deeper point here: with the right harness, today's AIs are capable of real, sustained work that actually matters, and that, in turn, is starting to change how we approach tasks.” #ai Keep up…

www.socialprogress.org/social-progr.... “.. the steady improvement in quality of life of recent decades may be going into reverse..rights are down nearly 6 points since 2011..health, safety,environmental quality all down..water,sanitation, housing,access to information slowed..” #socialprogress ‍

open.substack.com/pub/rainerka... “…rejects the comforting fantasy there’s a neat sequence—first stability, then innovation (or the other way around). In government, those jobs are concurrent.. You change while maintaining trust in the system that authorises change.” A a series worth following

open.substack.com/pub/rainerka.... “We treat the digital era (data infrastructures,platforms, AI) as an organisational and political transformation: changes not only service delivery, but also routines, skills, and accountability structures of public bodies.” #publicsector #digitaltransformation

publicpurpose.com.au/this-is-why-... “..our collective moment is not “merely a moment of disruption” but “marks a paradigmatic shift in global logic.”It’s not that the rules of the game are changing; it’s more of a wholesale shift in the nature, purpose and conduct of the game itself.” #transitions

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202.... “..it sees career officials as the enemy within.. Its demise is not collateral damage but the imperative. What took generations to build is being dismantled in months, and with it goes not just expertise but..the shared American faith in expertise itself.” #doge

It’s fast becoming obvious that we’re going to need some kind of major reset in our collective understanding of the purpose, value and impact of the #publicservice or #civilservice as an indispensable institution of public governance, including governing, that is fair, accountable and effective.

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “If learning shaped the last century, recognition will shape the next. And in that transition, micro-credentials operate not as a credentialing novelty, but as a cultural hinge between eras of meaning and value.” #highered #universities

open.substack.com/pub/culturis.... “..it makes sense why AI has been received the way it has. Its opacity is one of the greatest contributing factors to this: since few can explain exactly how AI works, its output naturally produces a sort of “wow” factor, which is the first step to reverence.” #ai

app.thenewworld.co.uk/story/148045... “The battle is no longer between left and right, but between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. The former is much more fragile..and it is failing…no longer regarded as dependably effective…the social contract upon which it depends is close to collapse.”

www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?sto.... “When students pursue.. a triple major, it is rarely because they want more credentials. It is because the cognitive architecture of a traditional degree no longer matches the architecture of the world.” Big challenge. Big response required. ##highered

geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/the-compan.... “..the strength of digital technologies comes from linking things up through simpler, shared systems. This essential lesson of the digital era is often missed by politicians and civil servants …” #publicservices #trust #government