Nonrival

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

China Is Winning the Technology Race — and America's Retreat Is Helping It Do So

hoover

• China has quietly overtaken the U.S. in electric vehicles, solar energy, drones, shipbuilding, and is closing the gap in AI — the result of decades of patient industrial policy while America was distracted by culture wars and political dysfunction.
• Trump's tariffs and territorial ambitions have, paradoxically, accelerated China's rise: Beijing redirected its exports, achieved a record $1.2 trillion trade surplus, and watched American soft power collapse globally.
• Inside China, AI is being deployed not just for economic growth but for social control — tracking emotions, disciplining residents, and monitoring workers — offering a preview of the authoritarian world order Beijing may export as its influence expands.

The U.S. Just Proved It Can Shut Down AI Models Worldwide — Without Warning or Clear Rules

itif

• The U.S. government recently forced Anthropic to take its frontier AI models offline globally due to a security jailbreak, disrupting hospitals, businesses, and researchers — then quietly reinstated them two weeks later through private negotiations with no published standards.
• The episode created a lasting 'reliability tax' on American AI: foreign governments and businesses now know Washington can cut off access without warning, which hands an advantage to Chinese open-weight models that no one can recall.
• ITIF argues Congress should establish clear statutory rules — evidentiary standards, due process, proportionate remedies, and a CVE-style jailbreak rating system — so that the next AI security crisis doesn't play out as an ad-hoc ultimatum.

Despite Federal Pushback on AI Regulation, U.S. States Are Building a De Facto National Framework

csis

• While the Trump administration has pushed to deregulate AI and preempt state laws, states like New York, California, and Illinois have quietly passed or advanced frontier AI safety bills that share a common core: requiring developers to publish safety frameworks, conduct pre-deployment testing, and protect against misuse.
• A comparison of nine U.S., EU, and industry governance frameworks reveals surprising convergence on four pillars of frontier AI oversight, suggesting a rough global baseline is emerging even as political rhetoric diverges.
• A watershed moment came in April 2026, when Anthropic's powerful 'Mythos' model briefly pushed even the deregulation-minded Trump administration to explore mandatory pre-deployment review — revealing the limits of a purely voluntary approach.

In the News

Iran and the Houthis Are Threatening the Shipping Routes That Were Supposed to Replace the Strait of Hormuz

the_conversation

• After Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026, Saudi Arabia pivoted its oil exports to Red Sea ports via an overland pipeline — but Houthi attacks on tankers and Iranian drone strikes on Egyptian port facilities are now threatening that workaround too.
• The renewed Houthi-Saudi confrontation breaks a fragile truce that had allowed Gulf oil to keep flowing, and if the Bab al-Mandab Strait becomes as dangerous as Hormuz, shippers would be forced onto an even longer, costlier Mediterranean route.
• Even that fallback may be compromised: Iranian drone strikes on Egypt's Damietta port suggest Tehran is deliberately trying to close off every viable escape route for Gulf oil exports, with serious implications for global energy markets.

Analysis

The Conservative Supreme Court Is Quietly Embracing Living Constitutionalism — Through a Single Metaphor

scotusblog

• The Supreme Court's phrase 'a law trapped in amber' — first coined by liberal justices in the 1970s — has gone viral in constitutional law, appearing in six Supreme Court cases this term alone and hundreds of lower court opinions.
• The metaphor is doing real legal work: by declaring what the law is not (frozen, static), the court implicitly endorses a dynamic, evolving interpretation of the Constitution — the very 'living constitutionalism' that conservative justices have long attacked.
• A Harvard law professor argues the amber metaphor is more rhetorical sleight-of-hand than legal analysis: it lets right-leaning justices borrow liberal ideas while remaining vague enough to avoid owning them.

Also Worth a Look

• Most Americans Thought Fauci Wanted Schools Closed Longer Than He Did — and That Misperception Had Real Consequences (hoover)
• Iraq's New US-Backed Prime Minister Can't Disarm the Militias Without Iran's Permission (atlantic_council)
• 23 States Ask the Supreme Court to Block Trump's Mail-in Voting Order Before the Midterms (scotusblog)
• Making robots more expressive and human-like may actually backfire when they make mistakes (the_conversation)
• The Trump Administration Is Trying to Strip Citizens of Their Right to Sue Polluters (the_conversation)
• A Historic Cyclospora Outbreak Is Exposing the Cost of Gutting America's Food Safety System (think_global_health)
• The U.S. Debt Looks Far Less Scary When You Measure It Against Wealth Instead of GDP (equitable_growth)