Canada is cosying up to Europe
What can they give each other?
Tech
Programmable Mutter.
Technology and politics in an interdependent world
Recent essays
30 of 44How should social science think about AI?
Big structures and large processes are back, baby
The Acemoglu Wars Are All About AI
Regarding that Economist article ...
No-One Makes You Shop at Amazon
Responding to Noah Smith
John Crowley has died
According to various sources, John Crowley has died.
We're stuck in Philip K. Dick's imagined universe
Hallucinations, rocket ships, deranged billionaires: how do we get out?
The downside of robot solutionism
Mapping the Abelard Snazz feedback loop
Noah Smith's Review of Power and Progress is Very, Very Bad
It should have been disowned, not republished
The political economy of billionaire derangement
The passions are devouring the interests
The Supreme Court is corrupting American democracy
One cannot hope to bribe or twist/ (thank God!) the U.S. chief jurist
The U.S. is still weaponizing dollars. Just not against Iran
Dollar power is not in danger ... yet
What the Anthropic fight says about AI regulation
Fables of the deconstruction of American power
What would Muskism be without Musk?
The mode of production behind the man
The Peripheral
William Gibson's best novel tells us a lot about where we are and where we might end up.
AI as Social Technology
The Astor Lecture at Oxford's Blavatnik School
AI Isn't Management. Try Explaining That to Matthew Prince
At last we have created the Corporation That Eliminates Middle Managers from classic management text Don't Eliminate the Middle Managers!
How AI Madness Helped Fuel DOGE
Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!
Four Theses on the Conservative Legal Movement
Originalism is the theory that the Federalist Society knows what it wants, and deserves to get it good and hard.
Our Future Is Being Devoured By Feral Thought Experiments
Here's a chance to start taking it back.
AI has limits, even if many AI people can't see them
On Ben Recht's fantastic new book
"Gooning Towards the Führer" as policy coordination
The Trumpist administrative style
AI is a bureaucratic technology. So is fighting war.
What happens when AI slop hits targeting systems and civil liberties?
Who loses from the Anthropic fight? Maybe Elon Musk and Alex Karp.
Arbitrary state power can cut in many directions
The Median Voter Theorem is a Clarity Trap
What the Democratic party needs - what it demands - is bold, persistent experimentation
The limits to Trump's power in America and the world
Hubris and cruelty have consequences
Davos is a rational ritual
How Europe and Carney disrupted Trump's ceremony of self-anointment
Europe has more bargaining strength than it thinks
But less than it would have if it were thinking straight
AI is great for scientists. Perhaps it's not so great for science
Large language models may make science more generic
My favourite posts from 2025
They might - or might not - be yours
"Classy" is the one adjective that has never been used to describe Donald Trump
That's his strength and his weakness