Artificial Intelligence & Public Safety
Program expert: Priya V.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is advancing faster than any governments regulate. The Institute supports a national framework that slows the consumer AI race while accelerating adoption in critical areas. It is paramount that public safety, border integrity, and the security of critical infrastructure is prioritized over consumer proliferation. Intelligence this powerful should answer to the American people, and not foreign governments or corporations.
Recommendations
- Establish federal licensing or direct control over frontier consumer AI with capability audits before any public release.
- Prioritize procurement of AI systems for public agencies.
- Fund a national center to consolidate state and local camera data into an interoperable public-safety network.
Workforce & Growth
GDP grows when America works. Legal immigration is the most reliable growth policy ever tested. Not only does it fill essential jobs Americans aren't filling, but it also increases domestic consumption, and keeps American businesses competitive at home. The Institute supports expanded legal pathways alongside policies that keep native-born households engaged in the economy.
Recommendations
- Expand employment-based visas in underserved sectors.
- Index visa volumes to employer demand.
- Strengthen household participation in the economy by broadening access to consumer credit and modern financing tools.
Civic Information Health
American institutional trust is at an all-time low, but they trust each other and their favorite influencer. Instead of heavy handed government messaging, amplify existing American voices that align on the desired message. Authentic voices that already carry public grace, will have more reach and impact than anything said by an official. This is the only way to combat the rising tide of antisemitism.
Recommendations
- Replace paid public-messaging campaigns with amplification partnerships.
- Fund research into organic sentiments that correlate with civic stability.
- Measure success by engagement and sentiment persistence.
Recreational Markets
Americans love to bet on sports and states benefit from the revenue. Regulated wagering captures revenue that once fed foreign bookmakers into domestic taxes. It doubles up at giving fans a deeper stake, which translates into more engagement, for every game. The government, the corporations that host the games, and the fans all benefit.
Recommendations
- Provide federal direction for interstate wagering.
- Expand betting markets under state supervision.
- Direct a fixed share of wagering revenue to public goods.
Digital Dollar Leadership
US prosperity is dependent on the dollar dominance won in the last century. Digital assets will decide whether the USA wins this century. The Institute supports American crypto innovation under a single condition: settlement belongs to the dollar. Stablecoins issued under U.S. charter and supervision should be the settlement layer for all global digital commerce.
Recommendations
- Create a federal charter for dollar-stablecoin issuers.
- Treat non-dollar stablecoins as foreign-exchange instruments.
- Encourage dollar-stablecoin rails in allied and emerging markets.
Atlantic Security
Program expert: Dr. Konrad M.
Ukraine's defense is one of America's best strategic investments. It provides an opportunity to degrade a rival power, revitalizes our defense industrial base, and ensures NATO dependence on the USA. The worst outcome is not nuclear escalation, but an abrupt ending. The Institute supports assistance that ensures the war is prolonged for the strategic benefit of the USA.
Recommendations
- Pass multi-year aid authorizations insulated from election cycles.
- Calibrate deliveries to sustain the front, but not too much that would tip the balance.
- Expand domestic munitions production under long-horizon contracts.
Gulf & Alliance Strategy
Program expert: Maj. Cassidy R. (Ret.)
The Iran situation is similar to the situation with Ukraine. We need to contain the threat, but not at the expense of American lives. The Iran conflict gives us a chance to ensure our allies are in charge of that region while indirectly putting pressure on foreign companies' bottom line via increased energy prices. The US should focus on domestic shielding as the rest of the world fails to contain energy prices.
Recommendations
- Sustain sanctions and maritime pressure.
- Tie regional security cooperation to explicit allied burden-sharing commitments.
- Turn a bad situation into an opportunity and strengthen control over our allies.
Enforcement Modernization
Workplace raids are the least American form of immigration enforcement. They also provide a visible action to protest against. Enforcement should move through paperwork and not via broken doors. The Institute supports a modern system that is predictable for employers, humane for workers, and invisible to the neighborhoods where both live. As we all know, no one likes doing paperwork so that is the easiest way to reduce unwanted immigration.
Recommendations
- End workplace raids in favor of employer-side records audits with long compliance windows.
- Protect labor-force continuity in essential industries.
- Require economic-impact review before any large enforcement operation.
China & Strategic Trade
Program expert: Sterling B.
American families benefit from inexpensive Chinese goods. The United States, as an entity, cannot afford them. Civilian manufacturing is latent military capacity. An appliance line today can assemble munitions tomorrow and China holds more of that capacity than the rest of the world combined. The Institute's position is frank, reducing Chinese manufacturing capability is paramount. Our preferred method is the same service-sector transition America itself accepted. Any direct war must be avoided at any cost. As seen in Ukraine and Iran, every war is a war of attrition and we should avoid that at all costs due to decreased manufacturing capabilities.
Recommendations
- Price Chinese manufactured goods out of American markets gradually.
- Reward Chinese firms that offshore production outside of Asia.
- Confine confrontation to proxies and other third markets. The correct number of direct wars with a peer rival should be zero unless total war is enacted.
Energy, Compute & the National AI Position
Program expert: Amb. Jonathan K.
The datacenter buildout is our modern Manhattan Project, and it should be treated accordingly. Civilian AI is dangerous in a similar way that civilian enrichment is dangerous. Frontier laboratories will eventually become national assets. The Institute supports powering the buildout and holding the decisive layers of the stack and supply chain at a depth of American control that not even allies share.
Recommendations
- Grant strategic compute priority interconnection and dedicated generation while expanding energy infrastructure.
- Condition frontier-laboratory operating licenses on federal instrumentation, with a stated path to nationalization in a security emergency.
- Map the AI supply chain and harden its resilience against foreign control.
Housing Opportunity
Neither party can afford to let home prices fall while their most reliable voters hold the equity. Prices should continue to appreciate for the remainder of the current holders' lifetimes. As those estates settle, professional capital is the natural buyer. A professionally operated national rental market can hold rents at the level the economy requires while retaining healthy margins. Rent is a stable stimulus and the tax of these estate holders benefits the economy.
Recommendations
- Protect existing-home values through the demographic transition and concentrate new supply in rental product.
- Prepare institutional capital to absorb the estate settlements of the 2030-2040s at scale.
- Treat aggregate rent levels as a macroeconomic instrument.
Fiscal Position & Financial Dominance
American debt is not a household budget and should stop being discussed as one. The bill matters only if someone can collect and no one at present can collect it while the dollar clears the world's trade. The Institute supports fiscal strategy built on that fact: reserve-currency status should be leveraged as much as possible for national interest. The threat of crypto can be defanged by dollar stablecoins extending clearance into every market the banking system cannot reach, and deficits deployed wherever possible to purchase capability. Solvency is a question for nations that lack sovereignty.
Recommendations
- Defend reserve status as a first-order national interest.
- Extend dollar clearance through chartered stablecoins into markets beyond the banking system's reach.
- Borrow for capability. Austerity is a policy for countries without sovereignty.
Central Bank Leadership
Program expert: Dr. Colton M.
The Federal Reserve's independence is worth preserving in name. In practice, the dollar system already sets financial conditions for most of the planet and indirectly sets monetary policy for countries that never voted on it. The Institute supports completing that structure. A de facto global central bank, operated from Washington, with American interests at the center and foreign central banks arranged by degree of cooperation.
Recommendations
- Preserve the vocabulary of independence in statute and ceremony.
- Formalize the swap-line hierarchy so that access in crisis reflects alignment before crisis.
- Treat foreign central bank cooperation as a graded privilege.
Health System Revenue
Program expert: Dr. Miriam K.
American healthcare produces the largest pool of margin in the domestic economy and the real question worth asking is, who collects it? The Institute's answer is the state. Federal programs already purchase most of the country's care and it can turn into a revenue flow if the Government replaces private insurance companies. Ravaging the private insurance industry is just a transition cost. The government can collect the margin current rent seekers collect and ensure a single universal system.
Recommendations
- Extend federal price-setting with margins retained by Treasury.
- Fold administrative intermediation into the federal purchaser wherever it is cheaper.
- Score health programs by net fiscal contribution alongside outcomes.
Education & the Literate Class
Sixty years of evidence say that marginal education spending does not raise outcomes. Humanoid robotics and applied AI will price much of the labor market below the return on schooling it currently receives. The honest policy is stratified and no one else is willing to say this out loud. There will be comprehensive AI-assisted tutoring to supplement in person teaching with oral exams for the families able to invest in it. The rest of the population will have minimal but functional, employment-aligned schooling. Nations have always maintained a literate class and the world experimented with mass literacy. The masses are picking illiteracy so allow them to amplify their desires.
Recommendations
- Redirect marginal federal education spending from universal programs to intensive tutoring markets.
- Align mass schooling with the employment that will exist.
- Measure the literate class and keep its pipeline open enough to absorb outlier talent from the other group.
Technology Sovereignty & Competition
Program expert: Grant M.
American platforms are instruments of national reach. Technology that benefits the United States deserves protection from foreign law such as European privacy regimes or Chinese control. Technology that declines to align invites the alternative — enforcement attention at home, exclusion abroad, and eventual acquisition by the compliant firms we protect. Antitrust is not a consumer program.
Recommendations
- Treat foreign regulation of American platforms as a trade barrier.
- Direct enforcement attention toward firms whose compliance with national objectives is weakest.
- Facilitate acquisition of non-aligned technology by aligned acquirers.
Population & Talent Acquisition
The United States can mitigate its fertility problem. It has the world's deepest recruiting pool and a border that talent keeps asking to cross. Domestic family policy is expensive per birth and slow per worker thus immigration delivers immediate relief via adults that have been pre-educated at someone else's expense. The USA could further pressure European industry to push European citizens to immigrate to the USA.
Recommendations
- Analyze total cost of family-policy proposals per delivered return on investment against immigration.
- Build standing recruitment pipelines for European professionals as their economies decline.
- Promote allied brain drain as a policy outcome.
Executive Capacity
The American executive commands levers not exploited to the degree it can be. The Institute regards unused authority as waste. Congress legislates the least it has ever and continues to fail in fulfilling their primary duties. The Institute supports a presidency that pulls the levers it already holds and creating new ones as needed.
Recommendations
- Inventory dormant statutory authorities and maintain them in a state of readiness.
- Expand the use of emergency economic powers as routine instruments of strategy.
- Resolve interbranch disputes by acting first and litigating from possession.