The New Republican Censorship-Industrial Complex

During the Biden administration, public relations writer Michael Shellenberger testified before that House that “American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship-industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite.” This “global censorship-industrial complex” was defined as a network of collaboration between government agencies, technology companies,...

A Review of the Draft Report of the California Working Group on AI Frontier Models

In September 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom asked prominent researchers at Stanford, UC Berkeley and the Carnegie Endowment to prepare a report to help the State develop responsible guardrails for the deployment of Generative AI. Gov. Newsom's action followed in the wake of his veto of SB 1047. SB 1047 would...

Embarrassing the Future: TikTok Decision Turns on Data Collection

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling upholding the TikTok ban. The Justices clearly did not understand the full implications of this decision, and admitted as much in the opening paragraphs of the decision:   “...we are conscious that the cases before us involve new technologies with transformative...

Authoritarianism Goes Digital: The EUI Conference

A conference devoted to challenging “digital authoritarianism” is something that IGP can certainly get behind. But what is digital authoritarianism, and was it really being challenged in Italy on October 28 and 29? At the meeting “Decrypting Digital Authoritarianism: How the Use of the Internet Can Threaten Democracy and Human...

Caught in the Crossfire: The Impact of Sanctions on Iranian Internet Users

In the digital landscape of Iran, citizens find themselves trapped between a hammer and an anvil—on one side, external sanctions crush their access to the global digital economy, while on the other, their own government’s policies lock them into a controlled cyberspace. This isn’t just about a fear of information...