The Strike Came Before the Robot
Thirty five thousand Hyundai workers walked out in July over machines that do not reach the line until 2028. Europe just moved its rules for AI inside machinery to August 2028. The United States has no date at all.
Policy
35 postsThe Recursion Problem (Graduated Obligation, Part 5 of 8)
Anthropic says AI now writes 80% of the code that builds the next AI. Every rule in this series assumed a human was still doing that work. Part 5 proposes a fourth term for the framework: the continuity tax.
The Decree Carries a Gate Inside It
New York just imposed the nation's first statewide data-center moratorium by executive order. Read the order's fine print and you find the same principle Oklahoma wrote into law: the build-out pays its own way.
Three 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.
Washington Recalled a Frontier AI. It Didn't Need a Law to Do It.
The U.S. government pulled a frontier model off the market overnight, not through a law, a hearing, or a court, but an export-control order. The door it used is the warning.
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.
Invest, Don't Subsidize
Universal Basic Income gives people money. Universal Basic Citizenship gives people infrastructure. The difference matters.
The 250-Degree Question
Oklahoma's Well Repurposing Act passed 85 to 6, but a single number buried in the bill, a 250 degree threshold, decides whether it unlocks thousands of wells or none.
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 Ripple Effect
Pick any Foundation component and watch the investment cascade through all 16. These aren't separate programs. They're one system.
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.
The Choice Ledger
These aren't natural conditions. They're the results of decisions made by people with power, in rooms with whiteboards. Here's what we chose, and what we could have chosen instead.
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.
Foundation Circos: How Needs, Programs, and Impacts Connect
An interactive chord diagram mapping the relationships between human needs, Foundation programs, and their societal impacts.
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.
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.