Tech Policy Podcast

Richard Morrison (Competitive Enterprise Institute) joins the show for a Big Picture Episode on how AI could affect art, culture, and politics.

Topics include:

• Take your Zyn and LSD
• Don’t rock out to this AI band
• What is AI slop? (What is art?!)
• Cultural elites hardest hit
• A brief history of tech panics
• Ban the prompt theory!
• The AI civil rights movement
• AI as counterculture

Links:

Big Yowie, AI social media influencer

AI and the End of the World

More Thoughts on AI

Richard’s Free the Economy podcast

Tech Policy Podcast 366: Tech, Gender, and Freedom (2023/24 Big Picture Episode)

Tech Policy Podcast 327: The Collapse of Complex Societies (2022 Big Picture Episode)

Tech Policy Podcast 301: The Realignment (2021 Big Picture Episode)

TechFreedom’s Jim Dunstan and Corbin Barthold discuss the NASA administrator vacancy, the  Artemis program, the NASA budget, SpaceX and Blue Origin, the moon and Mars, the FAA and NEPA, space regulatory sandboxes, and more.

Links:

“A Blueprint to Launch”: Regulatory Sandboxes for Outer Space

Roadster location in space

Tech Policy Podcast 372: Spacesuits!

Tech Policy Podcast 349: The State of Space Exploration

Foster The People - Lost In Space

FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter, Alvaro Bedoya, and Bill Kovacic speak with hosts Bilal Sayyed and Jessica Melugin at the 2025 TechFreedom / CEI Policy Summit: Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC & DOJ Interference in Media and Speech.

Links:

Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC and DOJ | Day 1

Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC and DOJ | Day 2

SCOTUS Should Not Hand Sweeping Removal Powers to this President

Supreme Court order in Wilcox v. NLRB

Tech Policy Podcast 410: The FTC and Online Speech: What’s Next?

Tech Policy Podcast 409: The FTC's Quixotic Social Media Inquiry

Tech Policy Podcast 402: Can Trump Fire FTC Commissioners at Will?

Maneesha Mithal (Wilson Sonsini) discusses the FTC’s investigation of social media companies. What’s going on behind the scenes? What’s the FTC likely to do now? How can platforms prepare? How much damage to the First Amendment can the FTC inflict? We cover all this and more.

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 409: The FTC’s Quixotic Social Media Inquiry

Tech Policy Podcast 406: The Take It Down Act (Is a Weapon)

Tech Policy Podcast 394: Tech and Trump 2.0

Tech Policy Podcast 322: FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips

Appeals Court: Yeah, Of Course Ken Paxton’s Investigation Into Media Matters Was Bullshit

Mike Masnick (Techdirt) and Santana Boulton (TechFreedom) discuss the FTC’s “Inquiry on Tech Censorship.”

Topics include:

• What are we doing here?
• The myth surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop
• Does the FTC know how terms of service work?
• Does the FTC know how cartels work?
• Content moderation is pro-free speech
• Jawboning on steroids

Links:

Copia Institute FTC comments (https://tinyurl.com/y6r2b82f)

TechFreedom FTC comments (https://tinyurl.com/mccbwa2h)

Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop (https://tinyurl.com/685fjmk8)

Moderating Eating Disorder Content Is Harder Than You Think (https://tinyurl.com/r37nvnjb)

Why Is The Republican Party Obsessed With Social Media? (https://tinyurl.com/bdec2u9w)

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez speaks with TechFreedom President Berin Szóka at the 2025 TechFreedom / CEI Policy Forum: Constitutional Limits on FTC, FCC, and DOJ Interference in Media and Speech.

Topics include:

• Nice broadcast license. Would be a pity if …
• Section 230 is good, actually
• Agency independence is good, actually
• How do you litigate regulation-by-threat?
• Edge providers =/= common carriers
• Jawboning versus  jaw 👏 boning 👏
• Skidmore is for experts

Links:

Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC and DOJ | Day 1

Constitutional Limits of FTC, FCC and DOJ | Day 2

Vidushi Dyall (Chamber of Progress) discusses the remedies phase of the Google search antitrust trial. Will Judge Mehta order Google to sell Chrome? To license its search data? To stop paying Apple for default status? And: With AI advancing rapidly, why are we talking about any of this?

Sorry about Corbin’s sound quality! He’ll be back in front of a proper microphone next episode.

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast 353: The Google Search Antitrust Trial

Tech Policy Podcast 393: Herbert Hovenkamp on the State of Antitrust Law

Jess Miers (Akron Law) discusses the problems with the Take It Down Act—the federal bill that (ostensibly) targets non-consensual intimate imagery.

Topics include:

• What does Take It Down (claim) to do?
• FFS, enforce the laws you have!
• “Sexually explicit content” (in a normal world)
• Brendan Carr is a preview of things to come
• Amy Klobuchar is asleep
• Is the “it” in Take It Down “all adult content”?
• The censorship administration

Links:

Jess’s Bluesky thread on Take It Down

The Take It Down Act Isn’t a law, It’s a Weapon

Tech Policy Podcast 403: The Constitutional Crisis

Tech Policy Podcast 404: The Worst Possible Moment to Break Encryption

Eric Goldman (Santa Clara Law) discusses his new paper, “The ‘Segregate-and-Suppress’ Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online.”

Topics include:

• The many kinds of online age-verification law
• Age verification as an information problem
• Fancy tech as deus ex machina
• Data collection today; state surveillance tomorrow
• What about devices and app stores?
• The internet and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Child safety: it takes a village
• The parental consent nightmare

Links:

The “Segregate-and-Suppress” Approach to Regulating Child Safety Online

Age-Verification Laws Are a Verified Mistake

Tech Policy Podcast 354: Online Age Verification (Sucks)

Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discusses the recent spate of attacks on end-to-end encryption—and free speech more broadly—in the United Kingdom and United States.

Links:

U.K. Orders Apple to Let It Spy on Users’ Encrypted Accounts

Tech Policy Podcast 356: The UK Targets End-to-End Encryption

The UK’s state-funded anti-encryption propaganda

The UK Has A Voyeuristic New Propaganda Campaign Against Encryption