Today, Victor Davis Hanson and Niall Ferguson discuss Thomas Sowell’s legacy as a historian of culture; Dan Edelstein explores the different legacies of the Marquis de Lafayette in the US and France; and Miles Yu explains what lessons from recent conflicts in Ukraine and Iran might mean for a future war with China, as well as how to prevent it.
The Sowell Legacy Series
Thomas Sowell is widely known as an economist, but Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson argues that he should also be recognized as one of America’s great historians. Joined by Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson and Coleman Hughes, Hanson examines Sowell’s groundbreaking trilogy of cultural historical analysis—Race and Culture, Migrations and Culture, and Conquests and Cultures—and explains how it reframed the study of race, inequality, and culture through a global lens rather than the uniquely American experience. The discussion explores Sowell’s “tragic vision” of human nature, his rejection of academic jargon in favor of clear prose, and the enduring relevance of his books, including Conflict of Visions and Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Hughes reflects on discovering Sowell’s work as a young reader and why his ideas resonate with millions on social media today. Ferguson considers Sowell’s place in the history of ideas and the revival of his work among younger audiences, while Hanson offers personal insights into Sowell’s scholarship, intellectual independence, and character. Watch here.
Freedom Frequency
The Marquis de Lafayette, general and confidant of George Washington—and proponent of the “rights of man”—is an enduring hero of the American Revolution, but his legacy is more complicated in his native France. For the Founders & Fellows series, Senior Fellow Dan Edelstein relates how Lafayette is remembered as a moderate during certain phases of the French Revolution, but that he retained an affinity for monarchy—an institution that American Revolutionary writer Thomas Paine attacked as “evil.” Lafayette also commanded troops who fired on unarmed protesters demanding a republic, Edelstein points out. Lafayette continued to advocate revolutionary politics after fleeing the French Revolution and spending years as a political prisoner. Yet his last years were spent supporting failed constitutional monarchies, never believing republicanism was possible in his homeland. Read more here.
Confronting and Competing with China
For Hoover’s Military History in the News column, Visiting Fellow Miles Maochun Yu analyzes lessons from the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Iran and considers their implications for a potential future war with China. Recent conflicts “delivered a simple but profound lesson: modern war is no longer won by possessing the most advanced weapons alone,” Yu says. “It is won by building forces that can survive, adapt, replenish, and keep fighting.” Challenging long-held assumptions in US defense planning, Yu argues that aircraft carriers alone cannot dominate the Western Pacific, and stresses that air bases in the region will not be impervious to attack. “The future belongs to militaries that are harder to find, harder to destroy, easier to replace, and capable of fighting after absorbing heavy losses,” Yu writes. He concludes that adapting US strategy while holding Beijing’s warmaking capabilities, like military industrial sites, at risk is the key to sustaining deterrence and “preventing the war from ever beginning.” Read more here.
Housing Policy and Local Governance
“The Santa Monica Airport will close at the end of 2026,” writes Visiting Fellow Matthew E. Kahn at his Substack, noting that this creates the potential for new housing development on “a large land parcel (190 acres) just 2 miles from the beach.” But “this isn’t going to happen,” the economist says, because the entire parcel will become a large new park instead. Kahn argues that “this will be a major missed opportunity and [another] example of how California’s beach cities misallocate . . . scarce land.” Kahn’s calculations show that mixed-use development of even part of the airport land could accommodate thousands of new residents, plus shops and restaurants. He also argues that “all or nothing” debates over the land’s future use, focused exclusively on park or affordable housing development, miss available compromises. Read more here.
Technology Policy
On June 23–24, the Hoover Institution’s Tech Futures Lab hosted its inaugural retreat, which brought together thought leaders from academia, industry, nonprofits, and governments to help anticipate and mitigate the risk of strategic technological surprises. Through a series of interconnected exercises, this brain trust identified possible technological breakthroughs, debated controversial assumptions about AI and national power, traced potential unplanned and unexpected applications of technology, and considered the long-term effects of technology on multiple domains, including health, economics, geopolitics, and humanity. The retreat was not designed to make specific forecasts but to explore a broader range of plausible—not necessarily probable—trajectories for existing and emerging technologies. The insights will help set the agenda for the lab in the coming year, including topics for future wargames and exercises, and provocative questions to address in future analytic products. Learn more about the gathering’s major themes and debates here.
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