the real populist backlash will start if and when the unemployment rate rises by at least 2 percentage points, and is accompanied by a clear narrative that AI is to blame.

credible commitment—building institutions in calmer moments that bind political action in turbulent ones—is a central problem of political economy

crisis-era policy is shaped by what’s available in the air rather than by what’s best, and right now the ideas most readily at hand are the wrong ones: data center moratoria, blunt sectoral bans on deployment, punitive taxation of compute regardless of use, and structural breakups designed for symbolic rather than functional purposes