Featuring Tim Dickinson, Roberto Valadez, Jason Berlin with Jen Rubin, Jesse F. Ferguson, "Offsides" with Pablo Torre, Bruce Schneier & Nathan E. Sanders, "Talking Feds," and the Democracy Movement
This edition of The Contrarian is loaded with excellent information on Jared’s column on what Dems can do to decrease healthcare costs for Americans is a must read!
FYI I snipped some paragraphs from the article on AI and wrote a note about the challenges we face in trying to regulate AI. Below are two note to the Gary Marshall blogsite to which I subscribe--Gary is well known in the AI community and ( think) would appreciate this article--if he reads/links to it.
FIRST POST of TWO
GARY and All: Below is the link to (and snips from) an article published on the substack from the CONTRARIAN, a group of writers and journalists, some of whom left the Washington Post when their management became entwined with the Trump administration, e.g., Jennifer Rubin, Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, and others. The whole article is enlightening but the snips focus on the huge difference between AI control and regulations by (1) democratic governments and (2) corporate and private power. All copied below with writers and links:
<How to build AI for democracy/Good governance of artificial intelligence requires providing for trustworthy AI. Dec 01, 2025 Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
By Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders
"Technology will not solve democracy’s problems, but it already has a powerful influence over democracy. Governments must grapple with artificial intelligence (AI) and not simply consign its development and application to corporate entities. . . .
". . . To be effective, regulators must shift their focus from the technological minutiae (e.g., how big the models are, whether the code is open source, what capabilities a model has) to the real source of risk in the world of AI today: the choices made by people and organizations. Remember that AIs are not people; they don’t have agency, beyond that with which we choose to endow them. To be effective, AI regulations must meaningfully constrain the behavior of corporate AI developers. . .
"One of the most exciting opportunities we see to distribute control over AI and improve its trustworthiness is to spur development of AI from noncorporate actors, particularly governments. Many national governments have the resources to develop their own AI models and could provide these free or at cost as public goods. Two governments investing heavily in this already are Singapore and Switzerland. . . .
" . . . The compelling difference between public and private AI development lies in incentives. In a democracy, government entities have an obligation to serve the public and need not be directed by the profit motive. An emerging category of products called public AI, AI developed under democratic control and for public benefit, can more easily adhere to democratic principles because its constituents require it and because its developers have no shareholders to placate financially.
" . . . This kind of AI could represent a new, universal economic infrastructure for the 21st century, much like the public schools and highway systems built by past generations. Democratic control is a fundamentally different basis for trust than corporate AI, but it’s no panacea. . . .
" . . . Moreover, public AI models would have a more justified place in democratic contexts than corporate AI models. Democratic governments should not employ secret and proprietary technologies in making civic decisions and taking civic actions; they need an alternative to corporate systems when using AI to assist in and automate functions of democratic decision-making. . . .
" . . . These alternatives need not be limited to national governments. They can be developed at the state and local levels. NGOs and nonprofits can also build AI models, although the substantial funding required for AI development makes them highly vulnerable to corporate influence. The saga of OpenAI, founded with a public-interested mission before it took billions of investment dollars from Microsoft and abandoned its nonprofit model, demonstrates that private entities can be tempted by profit to undermine their values and reverse their public commitments. Public entities in a democracy can be corrupted too, of course, but they at least offer electoral means of public control. . . . "
Excerpted from “Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship” by Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders. Reprinted with permission from The MIT Press. Copyright 2025.
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and the New York Times bestselling author of 14 books, including “Data and Goliath” and “A Hacker’s Mind.” He is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, a board member of EFF, and chief of security architecture at InruptInc. Find him on X (@schneierblog) and his blog (schneier.com). Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist focused on making policymaking more participatory. His research spans machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. He has served in fellowships and the Massachusetts legislature and the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University. You can find his writing on AI and democracy in The New York Times and The Atlantic, among others, and at his website, nsanders.me."
The above article mentions public schools. However, in the U.S. the GOP and long-term right have done their best to blur the distinction in the "public mind" between public and private principles for decades--they even openly complain that public schools are "unfair" to private entities because they are free. . . .
**. . . but it's a public service not a private business--it's supposed to be free so that everyone can get an education and where the overlapping of educated generations will keep the flame of democracy going**--so the GOP and right wing organizations, many based at their core in old-time racism, even want to make public schools competitive so that the principles supporting them and their relationship to democratic education for all, unfettered by capitalist principles and private biases will disappear altogether.
Everything works towards the concerted advantage of corporate and private entities, by an also-decades long propaganda campaign against teachers, unions, public school education curricula itself, and many other ways, vouchers and support of "home schooling" are only two example and public-private partnerships is another which are just one smooth step away from corporate control and the loss of anything public about public education, and now the diminishment and total loss in some cases of education that doesn't reek of right-wing propaganda, e.g., the closing down of the Department of Education. Do anything, but do not educate the poor, black, women, etc.
But for AI, the above is only an example of entrenchment of several forces, and how difficult it will be to do what the writers of the article (I think rightly) think needs to be done and to keep the idea of public service clearly distinct from corporate control--it won't be had in the rogue government we have now--which I hope will finally dissipate and emerge back again as a more true democracy than before, even stronger for having been threatened by such forces as are present now--there are many lessons to be had by understanding the history of public schools in the United States and how the conflict has emerged in this particular struggle to keep democracy itself afloat. IT MATTERS.
Please label the AI-generated images as such. They're awful and unnecessary.
This edition of The Contrarian is loaded with excellent information on Jared’s column on what Dems can do to decrease healthcare costs for Americans is a must read!
FYI I snipped some paragraphs from the article on AI and wrote a note about the challenges we face in trying to regulate AI. Below are two note to the Gary Marshall blogsite to which I subscribe--Gary is well known in the AI community and ( think) would appreciate this article--if he reads/links to it.
FIRST POST of TWO
GARY and All: Below is the link to (and snips from) an article published on the substack from the CONTRARIAN, a group of writers and journalists, some of whom left the Washington Post when their management became entwined with the Trump administration, e.g., Jennifer Rubin, Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, and others. The whole article is enlightening but the snips focus on the huge difference between AI control and regulations by (1) democratic governments and (2) corporate and private power. All copied below with writers and links:
<How to build AI for democracy/Good governance of artificial intelligence requires providing for trustworthy AI. Dec 01, 2025 Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
By Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders
"Technology will not solve democracy’s problems, but it already has a powerful influence over democracy. Governments must grapple with artificial intelligence (AI) and not simply consign its development and application to corporate entities. . . .
". . . To be effective, regulators must shift their focus from the technological minutiae (e.g., how big the models are, whether the code is open source, what capabilities a model has) to the real source of risk in the world of AI today: the choices made by people and organizations. Remember that AIs are not people; they don’t have agency, beyond that with which we choose to endow them. To be effective, AI regulations must meaningfully constrain the behavior of corporate AI developers. . .
"One of the most exciting opportunities we see to distribute control over AI and improve its trustworthiness is to spur development of AI from noncorporate actors, particularly governments. Many national governments have the resources to develop their own AI models and could provide these free or at cost as public goods. Two governments investing heavily in this already are Singapore and Switzerland. . . .
" . . . The compelling difference between public and private AI development lies in incentives. In a democracy, government entities have an obligation to serve the public and need not be directed by the profit motive. An emerging category of products called public AI, AI developed under democratic control and for public benefit, can more easily adhere to democratic principles because its constituents require it and because its developers have no shareholders to placate financially.
" . . . This kind of AI could represent a new, universal economic infrastructure for the 21st century, much like the public schools and highway systems built by past generations. Democratic control is a fundamentally different basis for trust than corporate AI, but it’s no panacea. . . .
" . . . Moreover, public AI models would have a more justified place in democratic contexts than corporate AI models. Democratic governments should not employ secret and proprietary technologies in making civic decisions and taking civic actions; they need an alternative to corporate systems when using AI to assist in and automate functions of democratic decision-making. . . .
" . . . These alternatives need not be limited to national governments. They can be developed at the state and local levels. NGOs and nonprofits can also build AI models, although the substantial funding required for AI development makes them highly vulnerable to corporate influence. The saga of OpenAI, founded with a public-interested mission before it took billions of investment dollars from Microsoft and abandoned its nonprofit model, demonstrates that private entities can be tempted by profit to undermine their values and reverse their public commitments. Public entities in a democracy can be corrupted too, of course, but they at least offer electoral means of public control. . . . "
Excerpted from “Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship” by Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders. Reprinted with permission from The MIT Press. Copyright 2025.
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and the New York Times bestselling author of 14 books, including “Data and Goliath” and “A Hacker’s Mind.” He is a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, a board member of EFF, and chief of security architecture at InruptInc. Find him on X (@schneierblog) and his blog (schneier.com). Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist focused on making policymaking more participatory. His research spans machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. He has served in fellowships and the Massachusetts legislature and the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University. You can find his writing on AI and democracy in The New York Times and The Atlantic, among others, and at his website, nsanders.me."
https://open.substack.com/pub/contrarian/p/how-to-build-ai-for-democracy?r=sl2c8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
SECOND POST of TWO
The above article mentions public schools. However, in the U.S. the GOP and long-term right have done their best to blur the distinction in the "public mind" between public and private principles for decades--they even openly complain that public schools are "unfair" to private entities because they are free. . . .
**. . . but it's a public service not a private business--it's supposed to be free so that everyone can get an education and where the overlapping of educated generations will keep the flame of democracy going**--so the GOP and right wing organizations, many based at their core in old-time racism, even want to make public schools competitive so that the principles supporting them and their relationship to democratic education for all, unfettered by capitalist principles and private biases will disappear altogether.
Everything works towards the concerted advantage of corporate and private entities, by an also-decades long propaganda campaign against teachers, unions, public school education curricula itself, and many other ways, vouchers and support of "home schooling" are only two example and public-private partnerships is another which are just one smooth step away from corporate control and the loss of anything public about public education, and now the diminishment and total loss in some cases of education that doesn't reek of right-wing propaganda, e.g., the closing down of the Department of Education. Do anything, but do not educate the poor, black, women, etc.
But for AI, the above is only an example of entrenchment of several forces, and how difficult it will be to do what the writers of the article (I think rightly) think needs to be done and to keep the idea of public service clearly distinct from corporate control--it won't be had in the rogue government we have now--which I hope will finally dissipate and emerge back again as a more true democracy than before, even stronger for having been threatened by such forces as are present now--there are many lessons to be had by understanding the history of public schools in the United States and how the conflict has emerged in this particular struggle to keep democracy itself afloat. IT MATTERS.