Today, Jacquelyn Schneider writes about the risks of future military conflict between the United States and China increasing as AI plays a bigger role in military decision making. Michael McFaul argues that the new US National Security Strategy ignores or downplays the biggest threats to US security. And Matthew Turpin writes of the latest Chinese Politburo member disappeared due to apparent concerns about corrupt behavior.
US Defense
In Freedom Frequency, Hargrove Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider lays out how increased dependence on AI in US and Chinese defense decision making could lead to bad outcomes. She writes of the intentional, inadvertent, and completely accidental ways in which militaries can launch hostilities against one another and suggests AI could raise risks in all three scenarios. “First, evidence from wargames suggests that LLMs (large language models) may have a bias toward escalation,” she writes. To remedy the situation, she suggests more training for US military officers about the risks and benefits of integrating AI into their operations, and better training for policymakers and new cooperation with China on issues around deconfliction. Read more here.
Determining America’s Role in the World
In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Senior Fellow Michael McFaul argues the newly published National Security Strategy ignores the main threats to American power (Russia and China), in favor of angering our traditional allies in Europe, and focuses on our own hemisphere. “To pretend the Chinese threat in Asia and the Russian threat in Europe can be ignored as we turn our attention to Venezuela feels like 1930s-era foolishness,” he writes. But he adds that the new strategy document has already sparked useful debate about US priorities, as polls show a large majority of Americans support renewed military aid to Ukraine and better relations with traditional allies. Read more here.
Economy
Writing for the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Outlook blog, Senior Fellow Richard A. Epstein argues the automotive Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards formulated during the oil shock of 1973-1974 should be eliminated. While the Trump administration has scaled them back from 50 miles per gallon to 34.5, Epstein argues there is no longer any need for the standards to be in place at all. There is no longer much risk that gasoline will be scarce in the US for the foreseeable future, Epstein writes, and the CAFE regulation often pushes car makers to produce vehicles that are fuel-efficient but not competitive with the offerings from other firms, simply so their fleet-wide fuel economy rating hits a magic number. If there is demand for fuel economy, firms will respond to it, Epstein writes. "Government coercion is not needed to tell new firms and old ones how to make money. In the end, CAFE fails every known test of social welfare, and this outdated dinosaur should be laid to rest." Read more here.
Revitalizing American Institutions
A conservative Supreme Court majority may soon let presidents replace commissioners at independent regulatory agencies, overturning the old Humphrey’s Executor rule, writes Senior Fellow Paul E. Peterson on his Substack. His article explains two clear views. First, conservatives say the executive branch should have one boss and worry that “iron triangles” (bureaucrats, legislators, and lobbyists) let special interests capture agencies. Meanwhile, liberals say Congress can assign expert boards to do quasi-legislative and adjudicatory work, and they fear mass firings of nonpartisan specialists. Peterson sketches the history of US independent agencies, from the Interstate Commerce Commission of the 1930s to the alphabet soup of modern agencies and notes that FDR preferred more direct control. He adds that legislative rules and the outcome of the 2026 election could limit any shift, if Democrats were to gain seats. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
On his Substack, Visiting Fellow Matt Turpin writes about the removal of 66-year-old Ma Xingrui from China’s Politburo. Ma was a former party secretary of the restive and now detention camp–specked Xinjiang province and served for the Politburo in an area rife with corruption: China’s defense industrial base and procurement authority. Turpin points out that anti-corruption has been a priority in China for 13 years now, but the forced disappearances of party officials who’ve fallen out of favor don’t seem to be slowing. “I suspect there are plenty of Chinese citizens who quietly admit that the only way to get this stuff under control is to implement actual political reforms, with real checks and balances, judicial independence, and a free press to hold these powerful elites accountable . . . but we all know the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] can’t let that kind of stuff happen,” Turpin writes. Read more here.
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