The Tech Policy Press Podcast

The killing of 37-year old nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis was filmed from multiple angles by residents of the city, and local government officials have implored the public to share evidence of immigration enforcement agents committing acts of violence with investigators. But what are the challenges of using such artifacts in the pursuit of accountability? And what is there to learn from other efforts to use video, including from social media platforms, as evidence when seeking justice for crimes by state actors? Inequality.org managing editor and Tech Policy Press fellow Chris Mills Rodrigo joins Justin Hendrix to discuss these questions and more.

Today's guest is Jennifer Lind,  an associate professor of government at Dartmouth, a fellow at Chatham House London, and the author of the new book Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny, just out from Cornell Press. The book introduces the concept of 'smart authoritarianism,' a strategy that seeks to preserve political dominance while minimizing the economic damage of repression. It’s a sharp and unsettling argument—and one that is worth considering as a wave of autocratization continues to sweep across the globe, increasingly enabled by new technologies.

In a forthcoming paper, George Washington University Law School scholar Spencer Overton argues that the Trump administration's AI policy is consistent with its broader efforts to advance ethnonationalism. By eliminating policies intended to ensure safeguards against algorithmic bias—and recasting work on such problems as ideological threats to innovation—Trump's policies embed exclusion into the technological infrastructure of the future. As a growing body of research suggests, when AI systems operate without regulation, they default to dominant patterns that reproduce racial inequality and suppress cultural pluralism.

A new book titled Governing Digital China offers crucial insights into China's governance ecosystem. Written by Daniela Stockmann, a professor at the Hertie School in Berlin and director of the Center for Digital Governance, and Ting Luo, an associate professor in artificial intelligence and government at the University of Birmingham, the book reveals a more complex reality than simple top-down control.
The authors show how massive tech companies like Tencent and Alibaba have become essential partners to the Chinese state, blending corporate and government power. At the same time, citizens exercise bottom-up influence, shaping how both platforms and the state respond to their needs. The result is what the authors call "popular corporatism"—a form of digital authoritarianism that operates quite differently than you might expect.

2026 is poised to be another landmark year for the child online safety debate in the United States.
In recent years, states have passed dozens of bills aimed at expanding protections for kids as they navigate risks on social media platforms, AI chatbots and other pools, with more likely on the way. Lawmakers in Washington, meanwhile, are considering a flurry of proposals that could set a national standard on the issue. But many of these efforts are facing legal limbo as industry and some digital rights groups allege they violate constitutional rights and trample on privacy.
Tech Policy Press senior editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to three experts tracking the issue to assess the current policy landscape in the United States and how it may shift in 2026, particularly as state legislators continue to take up the cause:
Amina Fazlullah is head of tech policy advocacy at Common Sense Media, a group that advocates for child online safety measures. She previously served as a tech policy fellow for Mozilla and as director of policy at the Benton Foundation.
Joel Thayer is president of the Digital Progress Institute, a think tank that advocates for age verification policies. He previously clerked for Federal Trade Commission official Maureen Ohlhausen and served as policy counsel for the tech trade group The App Association.
Kate Ruane is the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for digital rights. She previously served as lead public policy specialist for the Wikimedia Foundation and as senior legislative counsel for the ACLU.