Brad Carson

Father of Jack, husband of Julie. Ex Congress, DoD, @BattenUVa, Prez @utulsa. Prez of @americans4ri. An enthusiast, but w/ a gimlet eye on the log x-axis. Okie!

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

"In a mindless age, every insight takes on the character of a lethal weapon." - M. McLuhan to E. Pound, letter, 1951.

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

Yes, we need Skinner and Pettit for AI.

[@[email protected] @larsweisbrod]

Maybe we need a kind of AI republicanism, in the way this term is used in political philosophy by Petitt and others: the very fact AI could do those things to us is bad EVEN if it’s never actually doing anything harmful

[Gregory Conti @GregoryConti19]

We are living under an elite that truly has no sense of honor or responsibility to the nation.

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

100 pc.

[Senator Jim Banks @SenatorBanks]

The AI race with China is all about who has the best and most chips. There are four main ways China gets access to chips:

1.) Buying them directly from US companies like Nvidia.

2.) Illegally smuggling them from other countries into China.

3.) Accessing them remotely through the cloud from data centers located in places like Southeast Asia.

4.) Building their own domestic chips in China.

The Chinese military has used advanced chips to further its capabilities while undermining our national security, and the Chinese government has used these chips to strengthen its totalitarian surveillance project.

Congress has a generational opportunity in this year’s NDAA to pass bipartisan bills that would address all four of the pathways through which China acquires chips.

While we need a full assessment of the damage done to our national security by recent revelations, we can begin today by setting a better course.

No excuses. No apologies. Let’s get this done.

[Americans for Responsible Innovation @americans4ri]

America can regulate AI and widen its lead at the same time. At a live Washington Post panel, @bradrcarson laid out the playbook.

➡️Tighten and enforce export controls on advanced AI chips.
➡️Crack down on model distillation.
➡️Set guardrails for AI development at home.

[Ryan Evans @EvansRyan202]

Great opportunity

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

@kevinroose Finished up "The AGI Chronicles." Very highly recommended to anyone interested in the recent history of AI. Lots of interesting stories, esp. around the formation of A\ and much more. Congrats on the book!

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

Congrats to Congresswoman Doris Matsui!!

[Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 @PollTracker2024]

DDHQ: Rep. Doris Matsui (D) wins re-election in California’s 7th congressional district.

🟦Democratic hold

[Nathan Calvin @_NathanCalvin]

The extent to which AIFP's updated forecast is so dramatically transformed by the recent METR report makes me think even more that one of the most important and beneficial things that Anthropic could do is release far more un-redacted information from the report immediately, or have the government force them to release more. (cc @KelseyTuoc)

It is possible some of the redactions are legitimate (and the most sensitive could still be limited), but I believe that the tradeoff of accelerating some of the lagging frontier is worth getting more clarity and consensus - the current public evidence base is just not enough to be able for the vast majority of elected leaders to justify urgent and extremely costly policy action.

The conclusions here are far too important to propagate if true, and it is simply not possible to convince skeptics by just saying trust METR.

We need far more people with different beliefs poring over these numbers in detail, because if what METR is saying is true, it is without exaggeration the most important and urgent story in the world right now.

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

@luke_drago_ @sanjanaiyerr Look forward to reading it. Your summary of the points seems exactly right.

[Luke Drago @luke_drago_]

Great essay from our MATS fellow on why UBI isn't a durable solution to AI-driven unemployment. @sanjanaiyerr lays out four reasons:
1) No capital ownership: you get an income, but you don't own the system producing value.
2) No bargaining power: your leverage comes from what you can withhold, and if you can't without anything you can't credibly make demands. This undermines democratic systems.
3) Extractive systems adapt: governments and markets may use UBI as a license to impose more costs on assets that remain scarce.
4) People feel poor as the reference point moves: "society can provide free housing, food, transit and water, but if breathable air is scarce, an underclass still works 60-hour weeks to afford enough of it."

She also offers an analysis of common UBI-like alternatives including universal basic capital/compute, a windfall clause, and datacenter dividends.

It's ultimately unclear if any redistribution mechanism works when people lose their bargaining power. My position continues to be that we shouldn't sprint to full automation, especially without an answer to this.

[Tulsa Golden Hurricane @TulsaHurricane]

Coming HOME for Homecoming?

We've got a full day of festivities planned at H.A. Chapman Stadium this Saturday!

Here's everything you need to know before you arrive! ⬇️

#ReignCane

[The Midas Project @TheMidasProj]

https://t.co/2r0O8eX7s8

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

[Every tech guy who bought MAGA at the top]:

"Oh so now it's a crime to have an affair with a Chinese spy who is also the CEO of company that's evading export controls while you also lobby the US government to go soft on evasion and weaken the controls?"

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

Big news!

[Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh]

NEWS: @GovKathyHochul is launching an effort to independently test AI systems via state govt. and train a new generation of AI safety researchers via a public-private partnership announced earlier this year. The initiative is set to be led by Profs. Jeannette Wing and Greg Morrisett: https://t.co/VCQV7AgJt3

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

!!!!!!

[Justin Miller // in London @JustinMiller_NV]

Broad state preemption must not be on the table for any federal AI bill.

[Americans for Responsible Innovation @americans4ri]

For years, Nvidia denied chip diversion existed, disparaged efforts to enforce export controls, and denied their chips were used by the PLA, all while billions of dollars of Nvidia chips were illegally smuggled to China.

Let's take a look at the record.

Here's what Jensen Huang has to say, word for word:

Chip Diversion Doesn't Exist
Jensen Huang; May 17, 2025: “There is no evidence of any AI chip diversion. Recognize our data center GPUs are massive. These are massive systems. The Grace Blackwell system is nearly two tons. And so you’re not going to be putting that in your pocket or your backpack anytime soon. And so these systems are fairly easy to keep track of.”

China's Military Won't Use Nvidia Chips
Jensen Huang; July 13, 2025: “We don't have to worry about that because the Chinese military, no different than the American military, will not seek each other's technology out to be built on top of it.”

It Doesn't Matter Who Wins the AI Race
CNN/Jensen Huang; July 13, 2025: CNN asks "Let’s say I’m a company, I want to use AI […] does it matter whether [the AI] is American or Chinese?” Huang responds, “Your question about, does it really matter who gets there first? I think in the final analysis, I don't think it does." China Hawk is a Badge of ShameJensen Huang, Sept. 25, 2025: "“If you’re a China hawk you get to wear that label with pride, it’s almost like a badge of honor. It’s a badge of shame, there’s no question it’s a badge of shame.

There Is No Chip Smuggling
Jensen Huang; Nov. 20, 2025: "Over the years, people have speculated about diversion. We've chased down every single concern. And we've repeatedly tested and sampled data centers around the world and found no diversion."

China's Military Doesn't Use Nvidia Chips
Jensen Huang; January 25, 2026: “First of all, H200s are not used by their military because their military, like our military, builds on our own chips. And they build plenty of great chips. Huawei and many new startups, they’ve all gone public this year, hundreds of billions of dollars of market value now in building AI chips. So they have lots of AI chips for themselves.”

[Garrison Lovely @GarrisonLovely]

After being briefed that Jensen was sleeping with a suspected Chinese spy, Trump added Jensen to The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Even now, Jensen remains on the list of members.

https://t.co/2U9VyYQWYo

[Alliance for a Better Future @BetterFuture_AI]

She was using a school device, and chatbots were blocked from it.

But AI was embedded in Google Search with no way to disable it. They only discovered how far gone she was when they found a document titled “Funeral” on her computer.

This is why we need safeguards on the technology itself.

https://t.co/c3hj1lCU9I

[Gabriel Weil @gabriel_weil]

I'm giving a talk and answering questions on Tort Law for Frontier AI tomorrow at @Harvard_Law. Please come say hi!

https://t.co/TXNBHWj4fj

[Brad Carson @bradrcarson]

That's motivational!

I think political canvassing is a little like blood donations in that paying for it destroys the whole system.

[Teddy Schleifer @teddyschleifer]

Elon Musk's super PAC also used digital tools to try to crack down on fraud among its canvassers, a rampant problem in the industry.

The slides warned that if canvassers “in any way cheat or commit fraud, we will report you to local law enforcement and assist them in your prosecution.”

https://t.co/nwAiWyGmuA