China's October decision to add five rare earth elements to its export control list confirmed what policymakers have long feared. China controls 60% of global critical mineral production and over 80% of refining capacity for materials that power everything from electric vehicles to fighter jets. AI data center buildouts have only spiked demand further. Add cobalt to the picture—70% of global reserves sit in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China owns roughly 70% of that production—and you have a supply chain built for peacetime that could collapse in a crisis. The alloys in today's F-35 engines depend on elements Beijing could cut off tomorrow.

Joseph Krause argues the problem runs deeper than mining. Materials companies today are 75 to 150 years old. Some aerospace alloys still in use were developed for the Ford Model T. Meanwhile, China has been publishing the lion's share of advanced alloy research and aggressively recruiting metallurgy professors from American universities. China already fields a hypersonic capability using a niobium-based alloy; the US is scrambling to catch up. Krause's company, Radical AI, is building AI-powered labs to compress what typically takes 10 to 20 years and over $100 million in materials discovery into something dramatically faster and cheaper. The goal is inverse design: start with the exact properties the military needs, then work backward to find materials that don't require Chinese-controlled supply chains.

The Trump administration has moved aggressively, taking a $400 million stake in MP Materials, putting $2 billion toward stockpiling strategic metals, and working to streamline permitting that currently takes seven to ten years for a single US mine. FAI’s Farrell Gregory notes there's no silver bullet across the 60 minerals on the USGS critical minerals list, which ranges from rare earths at $8 billion in global market value to copper at $250 billion. The administration has shifted from blanket tax credits to case-by-case deals, prioritizing materials where Chinese leverage is highest and American action can make the biggest difference. 

Krause and Gregory join Evan to discuss the challenges facing the U.S. amid Chinese dominance in rare earth minerals and what policymakers can do to make the U.S. more resilient to supply chain shocks, including public-private partnerships and government funding.

The federal government spends over $100 billion on information technology (IT) every year. About 80 percent of that goes toward operating and maintaining systems, many of which are long outdated and obsolete. Some federal IT systems are more than 50 years old.

On day one of his presidency, Trump signed an EO that established the Department of Government Efficiency, which included a mandate to modernize “Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

While DOGE helped shine a spotlight on the issue, it isn’t new. The Government Accountability Office has long warned about the risks of poor federal software practices—taxpayer waste, inefficient government processes, harms to citizens who rely on services like veterans benefits, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Many presidents have tried to solve it, but despite some improvements here and there, the problem has persisted for lots of reasons. Government agencies often lack the expertise to understand their software products and needs. Agencies have also failed to properly audit and track their software purchases. The companies who sell software to the government often deliberately make it difficult for agencies to modernize, change vendors, or diversify their supply chains.

With a renewed focus on government efficiency, how can Congress and the Trump administration tackle the long-festering problem of outdated and vulnerable federal IT? What can agencies do on their own, and what requires an act of Congress? And how would the American people benefit from improving these systems?

Evan is joined by Dan Lips, Senior Fellow at FAI and Luke Hogg, Director of Tech Policy at FAI. For more, see Dan’s blog post and Evan’s op-ed.

The push for a federal standard on AI is back. With support from President Trump, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is looking to add an effective ban on state-level AI regulation to the end of year National Defense Authorization Act. Despite the White House’s backing and strong support from the tech  industry, the effort is facing bipartisan pushback, including from Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Democrats in Congress.

The battle is shaping up to be a redux of the moratorium effort from the summer, when a ban on state AI rules came close, but failed to make it into the One Big Beautiful Bill. While that preemption effort didn’t come with any federal standards in its place, this time proponents of federal preemption are working to assure skeptics that this won’t just be a ban on state rules, but will establish some federal safeguards on AI safety and child protection.

Can Congress agree to create a national standard that goes beyond simply telling states what they can’t do? Have the politics changed much since July when the prior effort failed? Will proposed safeguards be enough to move skeptics and those concerned about AI’s societal impact?

Evan is joined by Dean Ball, senior fellow at FAI. Previously, he was Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the primary staff drafter of America’s AI Action Plan. He is the author of the Hyperdimensional Substack, where his work focuses on emerging technologies and the future of governance.

The future of AI may be decided in backyards. Data Centers—the sprawling facilities designed to support the massive computing required to train and run AI models—are being built across the country. One estimate sees more than $1 trillion dollars in capital spending on data centers in the next four years. And they use electricity—a lot of it. While data centers can bring construction jobs,  tax revenue, and economic development to their communities, they also bring complaints about power and water usage, noise pollution, and architectural blight.

Debates are raging from town halls to the halls of Congress. Yes, politicians want the US to lead the world in AI, but elected officials, particularly local ones, are hearing from constituents concerned about data centers, including the potential to raise electric bills. The decisions being made right now in places like Northern Virginia, Umatilla, Oregon, and Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, will determine whether AI infrastructure is scaled quickly, or whether a backlash slows it down. If done right, data centers can bring world-class tech capabilities, lower electricity prices, energy abundance, and local tax revenue. Done poorly, we see working class Americans paying more for power, the electric grid struggling, and the potential for the American public to turn sour on data canters en masse.

So what do people need to know about data centers to make informed decisions? What really is the impact of data centers on water and electricity? What should policymakers in Washington do, if anything, about these debates? And are there ways to balance legitimate local concerns without hamstringing a strategic imperative?

Evan is joined by Asad Ramzanali, Director of Artificial Intelligence & Technology Policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. He was previously Chief of Staff at the White House Office of Science and Tech Policy under President Biden and Legislative Director to former Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA). You can read his recent op-ed on data centers here. Evan is also joined by Daniel King, Research Fellow at FAI where he focuses on the energy and security dimensions of artificial intelligence. Daniel completed Master's studies in Statistics & Data Science at Yale University and earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Brown University. Check out his substack on AI and energy, Policy Gradients.

For three decades, conservatives abandoned science policy. Now they have a chance to rebuild it.

That rebuilding effort comes with political challenges. Republicans' trust in science dropped thirty points over those decades. DOGE recently  slashed budgets at the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. And HHS Sec RFK jr. is casting doubt on the efficacy of vaccines to the alarm of many Republicans in Congress. But beyond the politics, American science is also facing a competitive threat from China. The Middle Kingdom invests tens of billions in biotech and quantum computing, and outpaces the U.S. in PhD STEM grads.

Meanwhile, American research became a system that rewards process over results. Researchers spend 42% of their time on paperwork. Only 46% of cancer studies could be replicated. And our guest today argues that perverse incentives and bureaucracy led to decades wasted on Alzheimer’s research that turned out to be fraudulent—among other misfires.

Ian Banks is Director of Science Policy at the Foundation for American Innovation, which recently established the science program he leads at the organization. He and Evan discuss his vision for a renewed conservative approach to science—one that learns from diversified investment portfolios that maintain safe bets while also making room for moonshots. They get into the political challenges created by hot button issues like climate change and COVID response, how to properly fund science in the era of DOGE, and what the proper role for politics in science should be.

Previously, Banks served in research roles at the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions, the American Enterprise Institute and as a legislative aide to Rep. Bill Posey, where he focused on science, energy, and health policy. His Oxford master's thesis examined the replication crisis, and he brings firsthand experience navigating these questions during COVID from his time working on the Hill.

California governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law the country’s first comprehensive regulatory framework for high-risk AI development. SB 53, or the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, is aimed at the most powerful, “frontier” AI models that are trained with the highest computing and financial resources. The bill requires these developers to publish information on how they evaluate and mitigate risk, report catastrophic or critical safety incidents to state regulators, maintain protocols to prevent misuse of their models, and provide whistleblower protections to employees so they can report serious risks. SB 53 is significantly narrower in scope than the controversial SB 1047, which was vetoed by Newsom in 2024. Nonetheless, it is adding fuel to a burning debate over how to balance federal and state AI regulation. 

While California’s AI safety bill is targeted at the largest AI developers, advocates for startups and “Little Tech” worry that they will end up caught in the crosshairs anyway. Jai Ramaswamy and Matt Perault of a16z join today to argue that attempts to carve out Little Tech from the burdens of AI regulation fall flat, because they focus on the wrong metrics like the cost of training AI models and computing power. Rather than try and regulate the development of AI, policymakers should focus on how AI is used—in other words, regulate the misuse of AI, not the making of AI.

Matt Perault is the Head of Artificial Intelligence Policy at Andreessen Horowitz, where he oversees the firm's policy strategy on AI and helps portfolio companies navigate the AI policy landscape. Jai Ramaswamy oversees the legal, compliance, and government affairs functions at Andreessen Horowitz as Chief Legal Officer. They’ve written extensively on AI regulation for Little Tech.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr just announced "Space Month" at the agency. Speaking from Apex's new satellite manufacturing facility in El Segundo, California, Carr laid out an ambitious plan to transform the FCC into what he calls a "license assembly line." The goal? Move from a "default no" to a "default yes" mindset, slash regulatory backlogs, and help American companies manufacture satellites at the speed and scale needed to compete with China's growing orbital ambitions. We're talking thousands of small satellites, direct-to-cell connectivity, and a fundamental reimagining of how government keeps pace with private sector innovation.

This episode takes you inside the El Segundo space ecosystem—the neighborhood that helped win the first space race and is now being reindustrialized to win the second one. FAI's Josh Levine hosts a panel with space industry leaders from Apex, Northwood Space, and Varta Space, who discuss everything from supply chain bottlenecks to the challenges of attracting talent in Southern California's red-hot aerospace scene. These aren't legacy defense contractors slowly building massive satellites—they're startups manufacturing dozens of platforms per month, treating satellites more like software products than bespoke engineering projects.

In the second half, Digital First Project’s Nathan Leamer sits down with Chairman Carr and Apex CEO Ian Cinnamon for a wide-ranging conversation about the geopolitical implications of space dominance, the unfair advantages China's state-backed companies enjoy, and why changing the terminology from "satellite bus" to "satellite platform" actually matters. Plus: why Starlink on airplanes is a productivity game-changer, how direct-to-cell technology could transform connectivity, and what it means when the same warehouses that built Apollo-era technology are now cranking out satellites for the 21st century.

In President Trump’s second term, federal agencies are navigating uncharted territory. Two Supreme Court cases from June 2024 fundamentally changed how agencies can operate: Loper Bright ended Chevron deference—meaning courts no longer automatically defer to agencies' interpretations of ambiguous laws—and Jarkesy limited agencies' ability to impose civil penalties without jury trials.

At the same time, President Trump is consolidating control over agencies that were traditionally seen as independent from the executive branch. He's fired commissioners from the FTC, NLRB, and other agencies as part of his push for a "unitary executive." Former FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter is fighting her dismissal, and the Supreme Court recently allowed the firing to stand while it reviews the case.

The fundamental tension? Courts are stripping power from agencies just as Trump is trying to bring those agencies under tighter presidential control. Will Loper Bright and Jarkesy make these agencies less useful tools for implementing Trump's agenda, even if he wins the fight to end their independence? And how will these cases impact the FCC’s authority looks to reform its broadband subsidy programs while fighting illegal robocalls?

Evan is joined by Tom Johnson, former general counsel of the FCC under Chairman Pai and now a partner at Wiley Rein. He is the author of a new paper for Digital Progress Institute on ways to reform the Universal Service Fund.

In this follow-up to his interview with Senator Joni Ernst, Evan dives into the legislative weeds of government efficiency reform with FAI scholars Dan Lips and Lars Schönander. While DOGE grabbed headlines with federal worker layoffs and chainsaw imagery, the real lasting impact may come from less flashy but more fundamental fixes: stopping the Treasury Department from sending checks to dead people, preventing Chinese-linked companies from exploiting small business research programs, and codifying anti-fraud measures that could save tens of billions annually.

The conversation reveals how Ernst's decade-long crusade against government waste has created a legislative roadmap for the Trump administration's efficiency agenda. From strengthening the Treasury's "Do Not Pay" database to reforming the compromised Small Business Innovation Research program, these aren't partisan talking points but bipartisan solutions with Obama-era origins that have been stalled by bureaucratic inertia and special interests. With Ernst's retirement creating a 15-month window and SBIR authorization expiring next week, the episode captures a pivotal moment when policy wonk proposals might finally become permanent law—or get lost in the political shuffle once again.

For over a decade, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has been a persistent voice against government waste, issuing "squeal awards" that exposed bureaucratic excess when few were paying attention. What began as a somewhat thankless crusade has now become the intellectual foundation for one of the Trump administration's signature initiatives. As Chair of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, Ernst finds herself in the position of watching her longstanding concerns become White House priorities—from fraudulent payments to foreign exploitation of small business research programs. She’s working to implement solutions she's spent years developing, including a blueprint for $2 trillion in potential taxpayer savings.

Ernst recently announced that she won’t be seeking reelection, creating a 15-month timeline for her to put her stamp on the U.S. Congress. The convergence of her institutional knowledge and Trump's reform mandate, with her lame-duck freedom to take risks, positions her as a unique figure in determining whether and how DOGE leaves a lasting impact on the federal government. The question isn't just what she hopes to accomplish in her remaining tenure, but what the government efficiency movement may look like without its most dedicated practitioner. Senator Ernst joins Evan to discuss her legislative efforts to root out government waste and what she hopes to accomplish before she leaves the Senate.