📣 Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield.bsky.social), Former Global Editorial Director of @wired.com, will deliver the media keynote address at the UC Berkeley Law AI Institute! He joins more than 30 AI & legal experts who share how AI is affecting law & business. 👉Register: bit.ly/463CniC

“Out of touch” — this from the party whose only contender for mayor has been wearing the same red beret for 45 years

Perhaps I’ve missed it, but in all the talk about whether the attack on Iran has stopped its nuke program, I haven’t seen anyone point out that Trump played a huge role in creating the threat in the first place when he pulled out of the JCPOA

Can lawmaking keep up with the pace of our digital world? Journalist @glichfield.bsky.social joins host David Zvi Kalman to discuss the challenges governments face in responding to rapid technological change, and how this is mirrored in organized religion on the Belief in the Future podcast.

This is in small font at the very bottom of the #NoKings website. It needs to be in large type at the very top.

Alternatively, “Thousands of Americans expected to take to the streets in defense of their neighbors and their democracy” www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...

It's time. #NoKings futurepolis.substack.com/p/its-now-or...

There's a difference between laws saying how cars should be built and laws saying how fast people can drive them. The proposed moratorium on state-level AI laws would be the equivalent of banning states from having speed limits. My latest: www.techpolicy.press/why-both-sid...

My latest for Bloomberg: Trump’s AI deals with the UAE and Saudi Arabia may be good business in the short term but bad geopolitics in the long term (gift link) www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

The story of what DOGE is doing will henceforth be all about this: not about firing people or cutting supposed waste, but making US data privacy an even greater nightmare than it already was.

There have been a lot of good analyses recently about what the "real" purpose of DOGE is. But what did Elon Musk *think* it was? My latest, for Foreign Policy (gift link) foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/14/e...

People who claim AGI is imminent mean a wide range of different things by it. For Bloomberg, I write that this AGI hype is obscuring our ability to talk intelligently about the big changes that are actually coming. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...

The term “artificial general intelligence” is being bandied about by some of tech’s smartest people, but nobody knows what it really means. @glichfield.bsky.social has some thoughts: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...

Worth a read. I worked at The Economist (one of the lumbering Goliaths Seward mentions here) when it launched. Still remember the FOMO at the new thing, and how much I loved @glichfield.bsky.social's newsletters. What a terrible business, the news. But as Zach says, so many great people. RIP Quarts.

If you're in the SF Bay Area, come to City Lights tomorrow to hear me interview Ray Nayler about his latest book, Where the Axe is Buried, a near-future science fiction novel that's also a critique of both authoritarianism and Western technocratic government. citylights.com/events/ray-n...

You had me for a second @garymarcus.bsky.social

Today I learned that (a) “greenhushing” is now a thing (b) we’re all getting measurably stupider and (c) the whole universe might be inside a black hole. Not sure how much weirder things can get

Right now most attention is on the damage. But I don't think it's too early to start thinking about what could rise from the ashes. One day—maybe a long way off—people will realize they want a functioning government and better ways of having a say in it. futurepolis.substack.com/p/a-scenario...

Found on the sidewalk. I can’t help thinking that putting this issue on the top was deliberate

"When hackers penetrate a computer system, security experts patch the vulnerability within hours. Trump has been using the same exploit for more than eight years. What’s our excuse?" In which I analyze the meaning of the Gaza plan and the media's response. futurepolis.substack.com/p/trump-is-a...

I really appreciate this piece from @glichfield.bsky.social on metaphors to communicate #PublicAI (or whatever you call it) to the public. Having spent much of my career focused on translating esoteric tech/policy stuff to folks, I know the value of a good metaphor! BUT I also have Some Thoughts 🧵

In which I wrestle with the problem of how to explain "public AI" to the public and decide that the best metaphor might be... supermarkets? futurepolis.substack.com/p/like-bridg...

That thing about how Trump's supporters take him "seriously but not literally"? That's clearer than ever when it comes to his nutso plan for taking over Gaza:

Anyone know if incoming presidential administrations normally delete the archives on whitehouse.gov from the previous one? I ask because this EOP budget request from 2022 is no longer available. It was last saved by archive.org on January 16. web.archive.org/web/20250116...

Bold claim from @rbreich.bsky.social robertreich.substack.com/p/the-muskra...

If I’m reading this right, the headline everyone should be writing but nobody has is: “Trump Decrees That There Are No Transgender People Any More” www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

With the inauguration just days away, I took a look at something the Trump administration ought to love: a report from Jen Pahlka and Andrew Greenway via the Niskanen Center on how to make the US govt less bureaucratic, slow-moving, and generally incapable. futurepolis.substack.com/p/reforming-...

So, are just heading towards a force-based international order now? Russia takes Ukraine, US takes Greenland and Panama Canal, China takes Taiwan…?

I wrote some more on the way the media has covered the UnitedHealthcare CEO's murder and how it echoes the mistakes of the early coverage of Donald Trump. futurepolis.substack.com/p/murder-mag...

Today's batch of @niemanlab.org Predictions just dropped! Featuring: @aimeetwoee.bsky.social @danieltrielli.bsky.social @doristruong.bsky.social @ericnuzum.bsky.social @ethanlindsey.com @glichfield.bsky.social @joshuadarr.bsky.social (1/2) www.niemanlab.org/collection/p...

Some thoughts on the brouhaha surrounding @taylorlorenz.bsky.social's posts about the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (A thread.) www.usermag.co/p/yes-we-wan...

This short call for ideas from @glichfield.bsky.social is worth your time: what opportunities might dismantling the US bureaucracy create? futurepolis.substack.com/p/taking-apa...

The polls are still neck-and-neck, but if you're starting to feel dread at the possibility that Trump may win, here are some aspects of democracy that I think will flourish even under his presidency. futurepolis.substack.com/p/where-to-l...

What if each voter could talk directly to an AI version of a candidate for office, grill them about their policy platform, and make suggestions for improving it? That's what a young political outsider tried in Tokyo's gubernatorial election this summer. futurepolis.substack.com/p/meet-your-...

Yesterday’s VP debate was a lot more policy-focused than the Trump-Harris faceoff. All the more reason, I’d argue, to use real-time AI-enabled fact-checking to pick out candidates’ lies and exaggerations. open.substack.com/pub/futurepo...

Big Tech has huge power over government, since it provides much of government's critical infrastructure. In this week's FUTUREPOLIS I talk to Marietje Schaake, author of the new book "The Tech Coup," about what governments can do to seize back control. futurepolis.substack.com/p/a-complete...

My newest issue of FUTUREPOLIS looks at an experiment in how to talk about the most polarizing topic in America: guns. Eleven strangers ranging from a firearms instructor to a schoolteacher who has buried nine of her students came together. futurepolis.substack.com/p/a-way-to-t...

Last week I launched FUTUREPOLIS, a newsletter on reinventing democracy for the 21st century. For today's issue, I wondered: What if ABC had used AI to fact-check the presidential debate in real-time? So I ran an experiment to find out. futurepolis.substack.com/p/ai-should-...

Digital authoritarianism is a rising global threat. @carriedecell.bsky.social joins Jigsaw panel "Beyond Pegasus: Curbing the Global Proliferation of Commercial Spyware" w/ @glichfield.bsky.social, Brett Solomon, Billy Leonard & María Luisa Aguilar Rodríguez. rsvp.withgoogle.com/events/da-fa...

I’m moderating a panel today on the Ukraine war’s lessons for digital resilience at the Tallinn Digital Summit—in one of the coolest conference venues I’ve ever seen, the city’s former central power station www.digitalsummit.ee/programme/pa...

Last week AI companies agreed with the White House to voluntary watermarking of AI-generated content. But how—especially for text? @acroll has a proposal, and it's fiendishly simple: use Unicode. https://www.wired.com/story/to-watermark-ai-it-needs-its-own-alphabet/

"$411 billion is more than 2x the size of Ukraine’s economy. It’s 100x the annual budget of the United Nations. It’s nearly two-thirds of the 2008 banking bailout in the US. And it’s likely to be an underestimate." @PeterGuest on the cost of rebuilding.

Here’s a an application of generative AI that I would find really useful. We often have to re-record or add snippets for our podcast after the first edit. I’d like a tone-matching app that can make a sentence I recorded on my mic at home sound like it was me in the studio. Does that exist?

This is an excellent podcast episode (and transcript) from WIRED with @glichfield.bsky.social and @laurengoode.bsky.social in conversation with @ethanz.bsky.social on will there ever be another Twitter. What about Bluesky, T2, Mastodon, etc? 40 minutes, worth a listen 🎧🔊 https://bit.ly/43JOyxd

I took a swing at Marc Andreessen’s latest big-picture manifesto. At first I thought, “Why bother?” But his words carry weight and a lot of intelligent people are sharing them. https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-marc-andreessen-labor-politics/

New episode of Have a Nice Future is out! We talk to Slack's new CEO, Lidiane, Jones about hybrid work, automation, and whether tech can ever truly solve our unhealthy relationships to work https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-wired/id1516843565?i=1000611565010 with @glichfield.bsky.social