Derek Robertson

One of the nice things about covering the frontier of technology — large language models, quantum, virtual worlds — is that they’re decidedly less partisan than most policy issues. That might be changing.

The collision of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and the recent chaos at OpenAI reveals something even bigger than social media’s shifting tectonic plates—the extent of the society-shaping power wielded by a very small cadre of Silicon Valley titans. Individual personalities—and individual fortunes—matter far more in the world of Silicon Valley startups than they do in corporate America’s more consensus-oriented, traditional bureaucracies.

In his new book “Techlash: Who Makes The Rules In The Digital Age?”, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler says regulators have failed to rein in Big Tech because they’re using outdated tools. Call it something like “regulatory futurism”—Wheeler is saying now is the time for the government to get innovative by setting up new agencies with wide-reaching powers to determine what is and isn’t in the public’s best interest when it comes to tech.

A new approach to tech policy is taking root in the GOP, and it’s not what you might expect from the party of Alan Greenspan and Friedrich Hayek. Led by a handful of ambitious, policy-minded senators, a group of conservatives is embracing the idea of subsidizing the tech industry and advanced manufacturing—with an eye toward building a competitive edge over China, and revitalizing the hollowed-out industrial centers that have given the party its Trump-era populist verve.

On November 8, America could accomplish another political first: Electing two US senators from the idiosyncratic, increasingly ideological world of Silicon Valley venture capital.

Crime might seem like a fake issue to the promoters of the metaverse — the kind of thing waved around by skeptics who “don’t get it.” But consumers are already thinking about it, and so is the industry.