Nonrival

Expert analysis from think tanks and academia, on public policy, economics, and technology.
Human experts. AI summaries.

Stocks of companies that use AI intensively are earning a measurable premium — and markets are betting on communicators, not scientists

voxeu

• Researchers analyzed 380 trillion tokens of real AI usage and found that companies more exposed to AI growth earn about 0.6 percentage points higher weekly stock returns than less-exposed firms, suggesting markets are pricing AI adoption as a systematic, non-diversifiable risk.
• The premium is concentrated in heavy, sophisticated AI use — frontier models, experienced users, complex tasks — not casual adoption, and is strong in developed markets but nearly zero in emerging markets.
• Surprisingly, equity markets favor workers in implementation, communication, and coordination roles over analytical and scientific ones, implying investors see AI as augmenting human interaction skills more than replacing knowledge work.

Americans Are Growing More Worried About AI, Not Less — Even as They Learn More About It

gallup

• Despite rising familiarity with AI, American skepticism is deepening: 39% now say AI does more harm than good, up from 31% last year, and nearly 80% expect AI to eliminate jobs over the next decade.
• The backlash is sharpest among young adults — nearly half of 18-to-29-year-olds now view AI as net harmful, an 11-point jump in a single year, reversing earlier optimism in that age group.
• Trust in businesses to use AI responsibly remains low and is slipping further, with only 27% expressing at least some trust, down from 31% in 2025.

ACA Enrollment Fell by 2.6 Million After Enhanced Subsidies Expired, and States That Filled the Gap Fared Far Better

kff

• ACA Marketplace enrollment dropped 12% in 2026 — the largest single-year decline since the program launched — after enhanced federal premium subsidies expired, causing average net premiums to jump 58% for subsidized enrollees.
• The drop was much worse than sign-up data suggested: a growing share of people who enrolled never paid their premiums, pushing the national effectuation rate down from 90% to 83%, with some states seeing nearly 40% of sign-ups fail to maintain coverage.
• States that stepped in with their own subsidies cushioned the blow dramatically — New Mexico, which fully replaced the lost federal credits with state funds, was the only state where enrollment actually grew.

In the News

The Supreme Court Has Never Been Less Popular — and Republicans Are Now Driving the Drop

gallup

• Gallup's latest poll shows only 33% of Americans approve of the Supreme Court, a record low, with disapproval hitting a record high of 61%.
• The surprise is what's driving it: Republican approval collapsed from 79% to 58% after the court struck down Trump's tariff authority, blocked his birthright citizenship order, and ruled against him on other key policies.
• Democratic and independent approval remains near historic lows too, meaning the court has managed to disappoint virtually everyone at once.

Analysis

AI Giants Paying for Content Licenses Won't Actually Crush Smaller Rivals — Because No One Will Sue the Startups

promarket

• Some legal scholars worry that when big AI companies like OpenAI strike licensing deals with publishers, they're deliberately setting a costly legal precedent that will price out smaller competitors — a theory called "anticompetitive acquiescence."
• But this theory assumes that content owners will actually sue small AI startups to enforce that precedent, which they almost certainly won't: cash-poor startups can't pay meaningful damages, and suing them generates bad press without a paycheck.
• The real antitrust threat in AI copyright isn't licensing precedent but exclusivity — deals that give one company the sole right to train on a given dataset, locking everyone else out regardless of what the law says.

Also Worth a Look

• Japan Is Finally Selling Weapons Abroad — and That's Both Good and Awkward for Its Allies (csis)
• Congress wants to stop China from stealing America's AI models — but its bill needs fixing first (itif)
• The GOP's Big Beautiful Bill Set Back U.S. Climate Progress, But Didn't Kill the Clean Energy Boom (roosevelt)
• Youth Unemployment and Elite Corruption Are Sparking a Gen Z Revolt Across South Asia (hoover)
• A Wargame Pitting Congress Against an AI-Powered China Bot Revealed How Beijing Might Cripple U.S. Troop Deployments Without Firing a Shot (csis)
• Trump Backed Down on Birthright Citizenship — He Threatened a Supreme Court Rehearing and Then Let the Deadline Pass (scotusblog)
• A $30-a-Month AI Tool Is Getting Life-Saving Medicines to the Right Clinics in Sierra Leone (wharton)