Planning When Reality Gets a Vote
A plan says what to do. A war-game asks what Tuesday will do about it. The planning discipline we use in our own shop, and the three questions that tell you whether a public plan is real or just announced.
Foundation
48 postsThree Ways AI Infrastructure Bypasses Democracy
A classified facility. A kill switch on a frontier model. A corporate test city. Three case studies in how AI infrastructure is being built without democratic input, and what the alternative looks like.
Braking the Wrong Wheel
A position on Anthropic's call for a coordinated pause, and why the debate everyone's having is about the wrong question.
Who's Telling You This
An introduction, not to a company, and not to a candidate, but to a way of working, and to everyone doing the working.
Who Decides What the Water Is Worth
Oklahoma just became one of the first states to make data centers measure the groundwater they drink. The fight over it was really a fight about who gets to decide what a shared resource is worth.
Regulation: What We Currently Think
Foundation's living register of where we stand on the rules that should govern AI: dated, versioned, and explicitly provisional. The positions we hold today, the confidence we hold them with, and what would change our minds.
Graduated Obligation: A Proposed Standard for Artificial Persuasion
A robot that can't hurt you can still carry a weapon. We propose grading an AI's obligations by how far it can move you, not how much force it can apply, with one hard line where persuasion becomes a kind of force.
Who Controls the Thinking Machines?
The White House blocked Anthropic from sharing its most capable AI with more organizations. The question is not whether that was the right call. The question is who gets to make it.
Four Billion Years, 48 Days
A third of the world's helium is trapped behind a closed strait. The containers have a shelf life. When the helium escapes, it leaves Earth permanently. This is what dependency looks like.
Sixteen Components, One Portal, Zero Fanfare
We finished the sixteen Foundation essays and told no one. A note on why building is easier than claiming, and why announcing is itself part of the build.
Sixteen Essays. One Framework. The Portal Is Open.
Four months of work. Sixteen essays. One framework for what society owes its people during the AI transition.
What You Already Pay
Slide your income. See the hidden cost of broken systems (ER cost-shifting, incarceration, lost productivity) vs. what Foundation would actually cost you. Spoiler: you're already paying more.
Why Oklahoma
Dead last in education. Bottom 3 in healthcare. 22,000 abandoned wells. Continental geothermal leader. Where the problems are worst, the opportunity is greatest.
The Dominoes
Click any crisis to start the cascade. Job loss tips into debt, debt into housing loss, housing into family stress, family into child impact. Foundation exists to keep the dominoes standing.
Foundation Portal Is Live: Come Build This With Us
16 components of Universal Basic Citizenship. Full essays. Interactive visualizations. An open invitation: what are we getting wrong?
The Seven Generation Fork
Two paths from 2026, traced across 175 years. The Iroquois asked: how will this decision affect the seventh generation? Here's the answer, both ways.
The Ripple Effect
Pick any Foundation component and watch the investment cascade through all 16. These aren't separate programs. They're one system.
The Guardian Precedent
George Washington's most important act was declining the crown. The first generation of civic AI sets a precedent every later one inherits, and disposition matters more than rules.
Sixteen Components, One Thesis
Foundation's sixteen Universal Basic Citizenship components look like a policy list. Read as a system they form one argument: freedom is infrastructure, and infrastructure does not come in pieces.
The Mirror
Five questions that map your priorities to the 16 Foundation components. Produces a personalized 'My Foundation' card showing what matters most to you.
Health Access in America
Three layers, one map: mental health shortage areas, food deserts, and uninsured rates by state. Toggle between them to see how access barriers compound.
Housing Affordability by State
Select any state and see the gap between minimum wage and what it actually costs to afford a modest apartment. In no state can a minimum wage worker afford a two-bedroom home.
The Merger That Needed A War
Oracle just got authorization to run generative AI on federal data: defense, intelligence, Medicare. The same week it closed the largest media merger in American history. This is what happens when there's no democratic infrastructure.
Why We Stopped Calling It UBC
Universal Basic Citizenship was the right idea with the wrong name. The framework hasn't changed. What changed is that we stopped describing infrastructure and started naming it.
The Five-Year Window: An AI Transition Timeline
A plain-language, visual guide to what's actually happened with AI, where we are now, and why the next few years matter more than any that came before.
The Numbers: Why Foundation
Interactive visualizations showing the human cost of current systems, and what the data says about better ones.
Foundation Circos: How Needs, Programs, and Impacts Connect
An interactive chord diagram mapping the relationships between human needs, Foundation programs, and their societal impacts.
Partners, Not Tools
Why abundance isn't charity. It's alignment infrastructure. The single argument that connects consciousness research to AI safety to political economy.
Why 'Universal Basic Citizenship' and Not 'Universal Basic Income'
UBI gives people money. Foundation gives people membership. The difference matters more than you'd think.
Oklahoma Doesn't Have to Be Last
50th in education. First in abandoned wells. What if that's not a curse but a launchpad?
Strategy, Not Protest
Foundation isn't anti-tech. It's pro-human. The difference determines whether you get a seat at the table or a sign on the sidewalk.
The Poverty Premium
An interactive calculator showing the hidden costs of being poor: the fees, markups, and time penalties that turn poverty into a tax on the people least able to pay it.
Thought Privacy
The right to an inner life. Because the technology to read minds is closer than you think, and we have no legal framework for it.
National Healthcare
Single-payer comprehensive coverage. Because tying healthcare to employment was always a bad idea, and AI is about to prove it.
Housing
Safe, affordable housing as infrastructure. Not a market commodity that consumes half your income.
Universal Basic Income
Yes, Foundation includes UBI. Money is one tool among sixteen: necessary but nowhere near sufficient.
Skills Training & Education Evolution
Continuous retraining as a right, not a privilege. Because the economy won't stop changing, and people need to keep up.
Universal Transportation
Mobility as infrastructure, not luxury. Including the self-driving electric fleets that are coming whether we plan for them or not.
Accessible Education & Training
Free, lifelong access to learning at every level. Not retraining programs after your industry dies: continuous development as a right.
Mental Health & Addiction Support
Comprehensive care for the mind, not just the body. Because the transition ahead will break people who don't have support.
Information Access & AI Benefits
Reliable information and AI tools for everyone, not just those who can afford the subscription.
Sustainable Energy
The energy transition isn't optional. The question is whether it happens for communities or to them.
Clean Water
Universal access to safe, clean water. The most basic test of whether a society is serious about its citizens.
Food
Access to nutritious, sustainable food for all citizens. Not charity: infrastructure.
Social Contract Reevaluation
The deal between citizens and society was written for a world that no longer exists. Time to renegotiate.
Safe Spaces
Environments where people can express, connect, and heal without fear. Not a metaphor: infrastructure.
Education
Not job training. Not test prep. Education as the lifelong infrastructure of a free mind.
Safety
Physical and emotional security isn't a privilege. It's the foundation everything else rests on.