on pointedly supported industry lobbyists keen to avoid any constraints and
consequences on their deployment of AI, while undermining the efforts of
consumers, advocates, and industry associations concerned about AI?s harms who
have spent years pushing for state regulation.

Trump?s actions have clarified the ideological alignments around AI within
America?s electoral factions. They set down lines on a new playing field for the
midterm elections, prompting members of his party, the opposition, and all of us
to consider where we stand in the debate over how and where to let AI transform
our lives.

In a May 2025 survey of likely voters nationwide, more than 70% favored state
and federal regulators having a hand in AI policy. A December 2025 poll by
Navigator Research found similar results, with a massive net +48% favorability
for more AI regulation. Yet despite the overwhelming preference of both voters
and his party?s elected leaders -- Congress was essentially unanimous in
defeating a previous state AI regulation moratorium -- Trump has delivered on a
key priority of the industry. The order explicitly challenges the will of voters
across blue and red states, from California to South Dakota, scrambling
political positions around the technology and setting up a new ideological
battleground in the upcoming race for Congress.

There are a number of ways that candidates and parties may try to capitalize on
this emerging wedge issue before the midterms.

In 2025, much of the popular debate around AI was cast in terms of humans versus
machines. Advances in AI and the companies it is associated with, it is said,
come at the expense of humans. A new model release with greater capabilities for
writing, teaching, or coding means more people in those disciplines losing their
jobs.

This is a humanist debate. Making us talk to an AI customer-support agent is an
affront to our dignity. Using AI to help generate media sacrifices authenticity.
AI chatbots that persuade and manipulate assault our liberty. There is
philosophical merit to these arguments, and yet they seem to have limited
political salience.

Populism versus institutionalism is a better way to frame this debate in the
context of US politics. The MAGA movement is widely understood to be a
realignment of American party politics to ally the Republican party with
populism, and the Democratic party with defenders of traditional institutions of
American government and their democratic norms.

This frame is shattered by Trump?s AI order, which unabashedly serves economic
elites at the expense of populist consumer protections. It is part of an ongoing
courting process between MAGA and big tech, where the Trump political project
sacrifices the interests of consumers and its populist credentials as it cozies
up to tech moguls.

We are starting to see populist resistance to this government/big tech alignment
emerge on the local scale. People in Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan
and many other states are vigorously opposing AI datacenters in their
communities, based on environmental and energy-affordability impacts. These
centers of opposition are politically diverse; both progressives and
Trump-supporting voters are turning out in force, influencing their local
elected officials to resist datacenter development.

This opposition to the physical infrastructure of corporate AI is so far staying
local, but it may yet translate into a national and politically aligned movement
that could divide the MAGA coalition.

Any policy discussions about AI should include the individual harms associated
with job loss, as employers seek to replace laborers with machines. It should
also include the systemic economic risks associated with concentrated and
supercharged AI investment, the democratic risks associated with the increased
power in monopolistic and politically influential tech companies, and the
degradation of civic functions like journalism and education by AI. In order for
our free market to function in the public interest, the companies amassing
wealth and profiting from AI must be forced to take ownership of, and
internalize, these costs.

The political salience of AI will grow to meet the staggering scale of financial
investment and societal impact it is already commanding. There is an opportunity
for enterprising candidates, of either political party, to take the mantle of
opposing AI-linked harms in the midterm elections.

Political solutions start with organizing, and broadening the base of political
engagement around these issues beyond the locally salient topic of datacenters.
Movement leaders and elected officials in states that have taken action on AI
regulation should mobilize around the blatant industry capture, wealth
extraction, and corporate favoritism reflected in the Trump executive order. AI
is no longer just a policy issue for governments to discuss: it is a political
issue that voters must decide on and demand accountability on.

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Apple?s Camera Indicator Lights

[2026.03.30] A thoughtful review of Apple?s system to alert users that the
camera is on. It?s really well-designed, and important in a world where malware
could surreptitiously start recording.

    The reason it?s tempting to think that a dedicated camera indicator light is
more secure than an on-display indicator is the fact that hardware is generally
more secure than software, because it?s harder to tamper with. With hardware, a
dedicated hardware indicator light can be connected to the camera hardware such
that if the camera is accessed, the light must turn on, with no way for software
running on the device, no matter its privileges, to change that. With an
indicator light that is rendered on the display, it?s not foolish to worry that
malicious software, with sufficient privileges, could draw over the pixels on
the display where the camera indicator is rendered, disguising that the camera
is in use.

    If this were implemented simplistically, that concern would be completely
valid. But Apple?s implementation of this is far from simplistic.

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Inventors of Quantum Cryptography Win Turing Award

[2026.03.31] Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won the 2026 Turing Award
for inventing quantum cryptography.

I am incredibly pleased to see them get this recognition. I have always thought
the technology to be fantastic, even though I think it?s largely unnecessary. I
wrote up my thoughts back in 2008, in an essay titled ?Quantum Cryptography: As
Awesome As It Is Pointless.?

Back then, I wrote:

    While I like the science of quantum cryptography -- my undergraduate degree
was in physics -- I don?t see any commercial value in it. I don?t believe it
solves any security problem that needs solving. I don?t believe that it?s worth
paying for, and I can?t imagine anyone but a few technophiles buying and
deploying it. Systems that use it don?t magically become unbreakable, because
the quantum part doesn?t address the weak points of the system.

    Security is a chain; it?s as s
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