Factions, argued James Madison in Federalist No. 10, had ever been the bane of governments grounded in the consent of the governed. However, an improved political science informed the new charter of government that he and his fellow delegates drafted a few months before in Philadelphia over the course of the summer of 1787. Well-designed institutions that minimized freedom’s costs offered a more promising approach to preserving freedom. So effective is Madisonian political science that it provides remedies for such up-to-date threats to freedom as social media and the giant companies that monopolize the provision of information about us and about others.

Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, the two original members of the PayPal Mafia, engaged in a rigorous debate at Stanford University in early 2018 concerning the relationship between technology and politics.

Sitting for an interview with Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge in 2017, the junior United States Senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse, discussed his book The Vanishing American Adult.

Peter Thiel spoke about the basic principles that underlie innovative products and startup firms, using examples from his own experience starting up firms such as Paypal and Palantir. He  emphasized the importance of creating a firm or product with characteristics of monopoly, and contrasted that idea with the distinction between monopoly and competition taught in economics.

Every fresh form of communication adds to propaganda’s toolkit, but computers have unleashed profound new powers of disinformation. Tech titans need to insist on a transparent, open Internet.

Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works, explains that all innovation involves an element of surprise—as do challenges, such as Covid-19, that we can only meet by innovating. “We should have been worrying about pandemics all along.”

Not too many years ago, we were still dreaming sweet dreams of a high-tech utopia. Now computer users have been awakened, rather rudely. Hoover fellow Niall Ferguson guides us through the new and often menacing reality.

A historical overview of networks and power, from the Freemasons to Facebook.