Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Lisa Liberty
by Lisa Liberty

“For years, automation has primarily threatened physical labor. Factory workers worried about robots. Cashiers worried about self-checkout kiosks. But something has certainly changed with artificial intelligence. For the first time in modern history, the jobs most vulnerable to replacement are not manual labor jobs, but cognitive ones. The people at greatest risk are not welders or electricians, but office workers, analysts, coders, marketers, accountants, journalists, support staff, designers, and countless others whose jobs exist primarily on a screen. … While technology has always disrupted labor markets, this transition feels different because of its scale and speed. Previous industrial revolutions still required massive amounts of human labor to operate the new systems being created. AI, by contrast, will increasingly remove the need for human labor altogether in many sectors. That leaves us with some hard questions society still seems reluctant to seriously confront: What happens next?” (05/20/26)

https://lisaliberty.substack.com/p/what-happens-next

Source: Antiwar.com
by Edward Hasbrouck

“The garbage-in, garbage-out process of automated and involuntary registration won’t produce a list that’s complete, accurate, or fit for the purpose of reliably and provably delivering induction orders. But it will allow war planners to continue to pretend that a draft is available as a fallback, so they don’t have to consider whether enough Americans will fight the wars they are planning, even if they prove bloodier than expected. And it will produce a list that’s vulnerable to misuse and weaponization. … The attempt at ‘automatic’ draft registration will inevitably be a fiasco. The only way to head it off is to end draft registration entirely. That won’t happen unless Congress feels public pressure — soon.” (05/20/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/edward_hasbrouck/2026/05/19/senators-propose-to-head-off-automatic-draft-registration-by-repealing-selective-service/

Source: The Daily Economy
by Lydia Mashburn Newman

“Kevin Warsh enters the Fed chairmanship facing sticky inflation, rising energy costs, and strong consumer demand. Prompt action may help avoid politically explosive rate hikes.” (05/20/26)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/warsh-inherits-a-fed-caught-between-inflation-and-trump/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Connor O’Keeffe

“A lot has already been written about the flaws and fallacies leading many to believe AI will trigger an employment apocalypse that will make everyone but a small sliver of the country much poorer. There are also reasons to actually expect positive political developments as AI begins to automate the exact kind of administrative, clerical, and bureaucratic work that has defined the so-called managerial class and made their positions necessary. And the environmental threat posed by data centers is often overblown by exaggerated projections based on earlier, less efficient forms of the technology that are now obsolete. Where the opposition to data centers does have some merit, however, is on the NIMBY front.” (05/20/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbardian-case-against-bad-data-center-policy

Source: Quillette
by Maarten Boudry

“Worries about AI doom rarely take Darwinian evolution seriously. A new paper argues we should—but we are still further from that scenario than its authors suggest.” (05/19/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/05/19/why-ai-is-not-about-to-go-feral/