Key Drivers of U.S. Technophobia.

Someone recently asked me if policy work in crypto has any impact whatsoever. Coming off of recent efforts to respond to an unhinged 1984-style FinCEN proposed rulemaking (the “FinCEN CVC Mixing Proposal”),^[i] this was a triggering question. But since we have a brief respite before the next fire drill, now seems like an opportune time for a deeper dive on the rhetorical questions we always ask ourselves in the face of U.S. regulatory hostility.

In the case of the FinCEN CVC Mixing Proposal, these questions include: What exactly is the goal here? The administration can’t possibly think FinCEN’s unevenly applied, unsupported landgrab to attach reporting requirements to all peer to peer transactions makes for good or even coherent policy, right? What’s worse, they were not subtle about the overreach, using an unprecedented application of their Section 311 special authority to, for the first time, target a class of transactions for being ‘of primary money laundering concern.’ How is that even mildly defensible without proving the prevalence of money laundering in these transactions? Aside from it being terrible policy that only does harm, how do they think they can get away with this? In this environment, what is the best means to have an impact on the policy front?

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What are we even doing here?

The FinCEN CVC Mixing Proposal is just the most recent example in a continuous flow of hostile proposals, legislative reports, announcements, and other aggressive actions flowing out of the Biden administration over the past few years. What's been startling is the sheer volume of attacks combined with the variety of approaches and origins, highlighting the executive branch's arsenal and its capacity to utilize the powers afforded to political appointees within independent agencies. This situation amounts to a war of attrition up until the next election, requiring policy advocates with limited resources to engage in endless clashes against an inexhaustible enemy. Over this period, I have found myself asking these same types of rhetorical questions on the bigger picture here: Who is behind all of this venom? What is the goal of this administration's policy-making function (if any) and how does it interrelate to vision or hope for a productive economic future for America’s next generation? There is at a minimum a fundamental disconnect that continues to manifest itself between a stated strong desire to maintain our global economic leadership and the notable aversion to innovation and technology that permeates all levels of policy-making in this administration.

Outside of these specific chess moves, I've wondered about the coordination behind these efforts, as they sometimes appear at odds with other actions from the White House. Biden did not run on an anti-tech agenda (that was more Warren's focus)^[ii], and he hasn't shown a strong interest in these issues to take such forceful stances. Initially, SEC Chair Gensler's actions seemed like a solo venture, politicizing his role by using enforcement and rulemaking to push policy positions. However, it now appears he was simply one of the first, or at least the most visibly aggressive, in using the state's machinery to advance a collective political strategy. The question of who is orchestrating this—whose agenda is being served—remains, given the extensive use of the administrative state's powers for these campaigns. A clue emerged during work on FinCEN CVC Mixing Proposal as it was rumored to have been handed to the agency directly by Senator Warren,^[iii] suggesting that outside of all of her anti-crypto saber rattling, she has a degree of direct influence on regulatory actions.

I. Double Checking the Separation of Powers Manual - Who is Empowered to Create Policy?

A. The Executive Branch: Personnel is Policy.

Digging a little deeper after wondering how Warren could have such an outsized influence on the Biden administration’s policy making function, the answer lies in “Personnel is Policy”— a phrase borrowed from the Reagan administration and put forward by Senator Warren in her unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid.^[iv] For years Warren has focused on gaining control of the policy making function, initially from a self-described anti-corruption lens of barring lobbyists, employees of federal contractors, executives from appointments and ending the revolving door. Her broader goal has been “to staff an administration that is much more rigorously separate from — and adversarial to — the business community.”^[v] During the course of that campaign, Warren revealed she had “spent the last seven years in the Senate studying the intimate details of how our government works, finding the levers that can bring about big structural change, and identifying the key positions that are responsible for making these changes. And [she has] learned from a diverse community of experts who share my vision for progressive, structural change and who know the executive branch inside and out.”^[vi]

Warren lost the election. However, the Biden administration decided to almost wholesale cede control of the appointment of a broad swath of agency personnel, particularly in the area of financial policy, to Warren.^[vii] She took on the task eagerly, stating of her approach that “[g]etting the right people in those slots is really important… and it’s not only the top slots, it’s also the deputies and assistants. The people who do the hard work day in and day out to develop policies and then to execute them.”^[viii] When given this power, did she undertake picks aligned with Biden, who ran on a “hey, I'm just like Obama” campaign? No, of course not. Instead “[t]he records and views of many of the picks reflect[ed] a marked shift from the more centrist- and business-aligned economic policy leadership of the Clinton and Obama administrations.”^[ix]Meaning, when the Biden administration undertook the unprecedented act of ceding executive branch policy-making appointments that are used to implement a presidential campaign’s agenda, she seized the opportunity to implement her own agenda and that of her backers. From this incredibly undemocratic process outside of expected norms, we saw her appoint a host of loyal ideologues, allies and acolytes of her agenda (i.e. her failed presidential campaign platform). Though she was able to influence broader appointments from the Dept of Education to the Department of Labor, these acolytes as it relates to financial policy included, among others, appointees at FTC, CFPB,^[x] National Economic Council,^[xi] the Department of Defense^[xii] and appointments throughout the Treasury Department.^[xiii] What’s more, she influenced the placement of politically aligned agency heads such as Gensler and Yellen at the SEC and Treasury respectively. These appointees, while not adherents to her specific ideology, had certain shared stances at the outset of their appointments.^[xiv] Note that as I am not a political operative and am only able to draw conclusions from publicly available information, it is not easy to wrap your arms around the scope of these appointments, particularly at posts that aren't as publicly scrutinized. The scariest of this group are the ideologues that support her within and without government. In the first group, this includes those she helped appoint to serve throughout all levels of the administration, not just those at the top but those operating unseen to influence policy stances from within. In the latter group, are policy think tanks and other members of a policy fifth estate, like Better Markets, that push a shared agenda based on a cultish and extreme vision of the future^[xv] (for purposes of this article, we will call them the “Warrenites”).^[xvi]

B. Executive Branch Landgrabs - Checks and Imbalances of Power.

Another key shift in this equation is the broader radicalization of the Progressive wing of the Democratic party that has occurred, culminating in the wake of the Trump presidency. Arguably this polarization has taken place over time, but Trump’s faux populism was a stronger drug than the Tea Party’s small government, restrained spending platform for traditionally left leaning constituencies. Going from “when they go low, we go high” to hatching arguments on how the Democratic party must do all of the deplorable subversions of democratic processes Republicans are doing (and more) to even be in a position to even the playing field. Warren has always been a doer, her approach to politics has been based on a theory called ‘deliverism’,^[xvii] which postulates that there is “a linear and direct relationship between economic policy and people’s political allegiances” whereby you must push through policies you claim to support to be rewarded at the ballot box.^[xviii] They view their progressive policies as key to driving good outcomes for people’s lives and themselves as an alternative to authoritarianism.^[xix] However, these efforts have been stymied by Republicans in Congress and, as it turns out in our post-truth narrative driven world, voters are not purely rational actors that always vote “in their best interest” (as evidenced by poor voters dependent on government subsidies voting Republican along ideological lines). Though Warren stuck to this narrative in the last mid-term, that the election results proved “[v]oters rewarded Democrats for protecting the lives and livelihoods of struggling families,” the correlation between economic policy and winning the vote was weaker than expected and election results have underwhelmed. For some Democrats, this produced a crisis of faith,^[xx] for others it seems to be pushing them to extremes. A 2023 article entitled “The Death of Deliverism” sums up this shift, citing a need for villains.

“Progressive policymaking will need to better identify and make clear for people the culprits fueling our discontents. Stories without villains make no sense to anyone.” “We should care not only about the details of the policies we pass, but also about how we fight for them. Policies that deliver economic benefit without speaking to, reinforcing, and constructing a social identity are likely to have little political impact.”^[xxi]

In other words, to fight authoritarianism (Trumpism), progressives need to take up the tactics of polarization, scapegoating and identity politics in order to be compelling to voters. The ‘by any means’ arguments are an evolution in deliverism along its villain arc. Essentially, going from the morally upright party that believes in our way of government to the party of self-delusion where it’s only bad when the other side does it. The lack of self-reflection is evident in efforts to push Biden to stretch the limits of his own power by urging “[i]t is not tyranny or dictatorship to ask a president to do their job and implement laws already passed”^[xxii] while simultaneously launching into broader arguments to subvert Congress:

“[T]he main function of a president is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. It still amazes me that election coverage barely, if ever, mentions this. It never asks the candidates how they will implement existing law, and what they will do at their discretion. Most policy coverage in campaigns, to the extent there is any, involves the candidates’ sweeping packages of legislation, which have to fit through the eye of a needle known as Congress. Implementing existing law has a substantially greater chance of being fulfilled. But for some reason, “faithful execution” never gets a fraction of the level of coverage that legislative proposals do.“^[xxiii] It’s gratifying that even high-ranking Democratic officials are thinking about the creative actions to make the presidency successful regardless of the makeup of Congress.”

While I am pretty sure our forefathers were not building a playbook for subverting checks and balances when speaking about faithful execution, these means justifying the ends arguments are also stress-inducing in their reach. They go far beyond the occasional call for court packing. They are becoming omnipresent and represent, in my opinion, a break from reality where the progressive wing of the democratic party have lived long enough to become the villain. Far from self-aware that they are becoming what they most hate, they suffer delusions that they retain the moral high ground because they know what is right for America and they are now willing to force it on us for our own good.^[xxiv] I hardly recognize them. This shift is evidenced by projects such as the Day One Agenda,^[xxv] a project by Prospect.org, with multitudes of articles created at the outset of the Biden administration urging him to take aggressive and unilateral action to implement policy:

277 Policies for Which Biden Need Not Ask Permission^[xxvi]
How Biden Could Give Everyone Medicare on His Own^[xxvii]; and
TPS for All: President Biden Could Offer Temporary Protected Status to all immigrants who come from countries suffering from the pandemic.^[xxviii]

Each of these arguing for the ‘creative’ use of executive branch powers to bypass Congress. To be clear, I am not even making a normative statement that these were across the board bad policy - things like restoring net neutrality, rescheduling marijuana, and reining in non-competes among other initiatives can be healthy goals in my opinion. In this context it is the means, not the ends, that I find deeply disturbing ー the blitheness that they advocate for expanding executive power to its limits and bypassing democratic norms while they are in power.Harnessing the most hated things about the Trump presidency, the disrespect and trampling of these norms in favor of a “if you can't beat em, double down” strategy. Make no mistake, Republican think tanks are keeping the same energy.^[xxix] This accelerationism is how democracy dies.

As we all know, the only time for reflection in politics is an election cycle where you are not in power. So Warren, supported by a broader swath of dogmatically aligned progressives operating with a view of how the future of the U.S. economy should be,^[xxx] have moved from studying the levers of power to attempting a wholesale puppeteering of the strings of these government functions to truly dictate policy from the shadows.^[xxxi] Achieving step one of grabbing ahold of power, these think tanks and public interest groups (which are actually called PIGs, not just among detractors)^[xxxii] work side by side with Warren behind closed doors, to ‘creatively’ wield it to in turn further expand their own powers and influence in ways yet untried. Namely, to really push the power of the administrative state beyond what is conscionable ー and you just have to do this to correct structural imbalances to arrive at a purer participatory democracy.

Now I will pause since I still have some self awareness when I sound crazy.

Letting them say it in their words: “[y]ou see, executive branch personnel hold the keys to wide-ranging authorities—ones already on the books. They just need the willingness to apply these untapped powers to today’s problems and the backbone to stand up to powerful industries while doing so.”^[xxxiii]

I am not a conspiracy theorist by nature (though I do hang out with them). This article is not intended to be some paranoia driven heat stroke about the deep state. Rather, I think that a lot of people in crypto have opted out of politics as a function of opting into the space. However, it is really important to examine the environment we are in to have a chance at being effective when working in policy. For my part, trying to work in advocacy, especially as we play defense, has really opened my eyes to the erosion of democratic norms -- the willingness to overreach and the tyrannical leanings of both parties. I would like Democrats to take a hard look in the mirror as they justify in public why agencies of the executive branch should have the means to make and implement policies, but only while Dems are in power.

In the latest episode of missed opportunities for this type of self-reflection, look at the political backlash Gensler faced when he upheld the rule of law as opposed to the Warren-informed party line of…. directly flouting a judge’s order by voting to deny the ETF.^[xxxiv] While Gensler is certainly no hero, nor is he someone who respects the balance of power and the limits thereof on agency rulemaking, even he reached his limit this past year. Given the lengths he has been willing to go historically in the realm of abuses of agency power, it should be incredibly concerning that Chairman Crenshaw and the other Democrat appointed SEC Commissioners voted no to the ETF, stepping right over those democratic norms of respecting the court as a check and balance on their power. Meanwhile, Gensler pushing the overall vote in favor of approval was characterized by Better Markets as contrary to “law and policy considerations”^[xxxv] and derided as “being wrong on policy” by Warren (nevermind that the SEC does not, and should not have a policy making function).^[xxxvi] As further evidenced by Warren’s more recent weaponization of national security arguments, these groups are not interested in dealing with facts or actually tackling issues on their face. They are instead willing to lie, mischaracterize and engage in other dishonest tactics to stymy, over-regulate, decelerate and de-prioritize technology, innovation and finance. They feel perfectly at home making ‘ends justifying the means’ arguments, eroding our system of checks and balances to grow their own power and further their goals. As someone who is left leaning, I truly cannot recognize the progressive wing of the party anymore. This is the stuff of villains - truly, your autocrat is showing.

II. The Substance: Where is the Executive Branch on Policy?

Now aside from process concerns, it is worth diving into the meat of what the underlying policy entails. Generally in terms of an economic plan, Biden and the Warrenites are generally aligned on an economic agenda that puts industrialization front and center. The Biden administration put forth a proposal for a "New Washington Consensus" and has advanced visions of Bidenomics centered on a regressive return to ‘the good old times’ via a domestic manufacturing economy of the mid 20th century, which they believe is both a matter of "national security" by onshoring critical supply chains but also a way of competing in global trade among nations using subsidies like China that have prospered while “America’s industrial base had been hollowed out” (again, everything needs a national security justification). Citing a coming to terms with failed assumptions around trade liberalization, that the belief that “markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently—no matter what our competitors did, no matter how big our shared challenges grew, and no matter how many guardrails we took down” led to “entire supply chains of strategic goods—along with the industries and jobs that made them—moved overseas” in the name of market efficiency.^[xxxvii]

The New Washington Consensus also decries that growth that stems from being an advanced economy. Stating another failed assumption has been that “[all growth was good growth. So, various reforms combined and came together to privilege some sectors of the economy, like finance, while other essential sectors, like semiconductors and infrastructure, atrophied. Our industrial capacity—which is crucial to any country’s ability to continue to innovate—took a real hit.”

The quiet part of all this is that a significant shared motivation behind the Democratic party’s aligned advocacy for manufacturing is the aim to regain support from blue-collar workers and strengthen the union vote for the Democratic Party. Essentially, the prioritization of a shift back to traditional industries to both diversify the economy is at least partly a play to respond to Trump’s populism and bolster political support among working-class voters.^[xxxviii] More broadly, sending us all back to work in the factories and pivoting away from tech (other than semiconductors) and the digital economy to building domestic capacity. Ultimately, they believe tech and finance to have been fundamental drivers in inequality. The wealth gap and creating "bad" market outcomes. They see their agenda as leading to growth of the middle class, broader prosperity and resulting reduction in populist sentiment.^[xxxix]

What differs - and this is very important - is the extremes in which they view the world and the extremes they are willing to take to achieve their agenda. Biden is, at his core, a moderate and generally unwilling to take up some of the scarier tactics while Warren’s Personnel are in fact very willing. He also views success as coming from more moderate reform. However, he has empowered the Warrenites and they have taken up residence in all corners of his administration. I believe this dynamic makes for some of the schizophrenia coming from the executive branch in their approach to crypto and tech policy overall. While Biden looks at industrialization - a return to manufacturing as something that the U.S. should reemphasize (and I think most of America is generally aligned), Warrenites take things off the rails in how they approach achieving these goals and what success looks like.

A. Drinking the Warrenite KoolAid.

When it comes to the Warrenites, as you start to look at their ends, those should also cause discomfort for a lot of Americans. Aside from a general disdain for all industry, the Warrenite coalition shares a particularly critical stance toward the financial and technology sectors, including for purposes of this article, major tech companies, Silicon Valley, and up and coming industries such as fintech, AI and crypto. Their approach is characterized by skepticism towards these industries and a push for policies that favor the resurgence of manufacturing within the U.S. via a centrally planned economy. One that emphasizes which industries to promote and is capable of killing off others.^[xl]

As referenced earlier, one of the strongest voices among the Warrenites is the public interest group Better Markets. Better Markets is incredibly careful not to use alarming language in their materials, describing themselves as ‘pro-market’ and ‘pro-growth’.^[xli] In reality, they seek to employ a ‘no child left behind’ economic strategy. In its own words, Better Markets, much like Warren, is focused on “the productive economy" of jobs and workers. It seeks to reshape the economy through a return to traditional banking and by minimizing “socially useless wealth extraction”.^[xlii] Needless to say, they are not fans. They view the crypto industry as having “fundamentally predatory business model” with “no legitimate or socially useful purpose.”^[xliii] In other words, they seek to snuff out speculative activity across the market, of which crypto forms just a small part, heighten banking restrictions and regulations, foster a return to blue collar job creation and aggressively pursue other economic policies that redistribute wealth. While raising standards of living are noble goals, this group’s means of accomplishing this are deeply disturbing ー they seek to ever-expand the reach of the state over financial activities in a bid to reverse time, harkening back to when things were simpler to promote “broad-based prosperity”. For them, the word ‘refocusing’ is key because the reforms they seek aren’t just to step up manufacturing, chip making and upskilling workers. They mean ‘refocusing’ in a zero-sum way to deemphasize and dismantle the tech and financial industries. As they describe it, a goal of this ‘refocusing’ is ending too big to fail as they redirect “the largest, most dangerous financial institutions away from risky and purely profit-driven activities”. The end goal is to wholesale shift the U.S. economy away from finance and technology sectors, which they view as causing a lot of the issues America is experiencing today, towards a ‘productive’ industrial economy.

However, in their general aversion to business interests and zeal for state led planning, Warrenites saying these quiet parts out loud have fever dreams of collapsing many industries that they view unfavorably. Again the progressive Day 1 Agenda envisioned Biden, at the outset of his administration, weaponizing the arms of the state to take down the private equity industry, pharmaceutical giants and for profit colleges, dreaming up all the ways the executive branch could cause economic collapse without the need for passing legislative reforms - including among other things:

Causing PE investments in the prison system and technologies to “crash [as] Federal officials charged with acquisition and procurement policy, people like the undersecretary of defense for acquisitions and sustainment or the administrator for the office of federal procurement, could throw private equity’s stake in federal contracting companies into jeopardy by raising standards around safety and wages, or by simply prioritizing bringing more capacity in-house.”^[xliv]
On pharmaceuticals, the “secretary of health and human services could undercut pharmaceutical profiteering by seizing drug patents when companies set astronomical prices.”
On for-profit schools, FSA (presumably just in the case of for-profit schools) could become “aggressive on financial measures. For example, FSA could establish joint liability, so that any loan discharges or refunds would be paid not only by the school (which often goes bankrupt to avoid this), but by third-party servicers, affiliates, corporate parents, and individual officers.”^[xlv]
To fight corporate power and consolidation, they suggest “agencies, for instance, should treat a merger that creates a firm with 10 percent or more of a market as [per se] illegal and state they will block it in court. And illegal mergers should not be permitted on “efficiency” grounds.”^[xlvi]

The left would now further seek to insulate themselves from a diversity of inputs and experiences^[xlvii] by refusing to hire people who have worked in industries and limiting their options on reentry into the private sector.^[xlviii] Sure, balance is needed. There are good reasons to police conflicts, but shifting to demonize people with actual private sector experience, as Warren continues to push for, only furthers the very apparent echo chamber that is in effect. Ultimately, there is the very human dilemma that the people who seek private sector experience need jobs. They are not independently wealthy. Meanwhile, a lot of the extremism that is being created seems to be stemming from centers of power that exist both within political circles and within the fifth estate, including an obscenely wealthy donor class of ideologues that hold influence on both sides of the aisle.^[xlix] Though their role in politics is well documented, they have also undue influence over all sectors of society through the power of the purse, polarizing all elements of social discourse. In this sense, rather than providing balance, these policies that seek to exclude working professionals just seem to further the lack of accountability of the administrative state to Americans.

In this light, Warren’s calls to limit input into policy, while conscious of the corrupting power of money in politics, ignore that the same sickness caused by vast concentrations of wealth in politics inevitably infects the think tanks and other donor-funded PIGs on which she relies.^[l] While I would be inclined to agree that more checks and balances are needed across all levels of government on these types of corrupting forces that choke out a diversity of thought, she takes the opposite approach. Her extreme unwillingness to listen to other voices has turned into a desire to totally remove those voices that she does not want from the process. There is a sickness at hand, it is inherent in the echo chamber that exists among progressives calling to an end to all corporate influence.^[li] “In Warren’s world, the people on the other side are patsies and shills on the take, not people who disagree in good faith and who you work with to forge compromises.”^[lii] This wing of the Progressive party has become so filled with hatred over the ills of capitalism that they see it as an enemy to be dismantled. Democrats used to be a big tent.^[liii] I cannot think of a way to narrow the tent more than to kick out the people who make arguments around job creation ー which exits from the party, those people who… you know, need those private sector jobs and hope for a degree of upward mobility in an advanced economy. They have exchanged this for Trumpian kiss-the-ring style purity tests. As we know from history, the people imposing these tests rarely meet them.^[liv] And they are doing this both in their self-imposed echo chamber, having freed themselves of dissenting views as shills of special interest, in a post-deliverism era, cognizant that their constituents have not rewarded them politically for ‘doing the right thing’ by them. And its starting to look a little dictatorial to be honest:

In light of the ideas that are being generated within this thought bubble by Warren’s constituency of professional think tanks, interest groups, bureaucrats and academics, I would argue that extremism in any form is dangerous to our future.

B. Policy Creation: Expanding & Weaponizing the State.

Though Warren is focused on money as the currency of corruption, an equally dangerous sickness is the desire to concentrate and consolidate power for oneself - a sickness I believe she harbors.^[lv] This desire is prevalent among the Warrenites, who seek the means to impose the vast structural changes they desire ーstructural changes that would require continuity in governance along a decades-long timeline to be effectively implemented. This necessarily means (i) an expansion of the state, (ii) the consolidation of monetary policy under the state and (iii) grabbing the means to weaponize the state to dictate preferred economic outcomes and reshape the economy.

While we can certainly keep railing that the free market has failed us, just to level set us here -- the U.S. economy is already not a pure free market economy.^[lvi] As a mixed economy (K-12 diagram below), we follow free market principles when it comes to capital use but allow government intervention to advance the public good. However, there is a broad spectrum ranging from free market economies driven by consumers having the freedom to make their own decisions to command economies directed and run by the State.^[lvii]

There are a variety of causalties ー market failures, inefficient markets and the need for oversight that cause governments to intervene along the way, short of advocating for a command economy. All of these arguments have been employed by Democrats to argue for more regulation over the years. However, even with increased regulation and rulemaking, the inherent distrust in free markets and disdain of market outcomes where the rich get richer and corporations exploit consumers has grown over the years as economic inequality has grown. The more extreme calls for central planning are now based on a fundamental trust that they, themselves ー technocrats of the DC variety ー are able to make better decisions with better outcomes for the U.S. than the markets. However, the U.S govt has not demonstrated an ability to run anything well, debt is mounting & these plans necessarily involve an increase in the size, scope, power and spending of the administrative state. There is considerable reason to pause. Many already find the never-ending expansions of the (increasingly unaccountable) administrative state deeply disconcerting as it is. Going to full-on central planning oriented state-led development is a leap.

On the political calculus of a CBDC, it is an infinitely beneficial tool for central planning -- these calls for CBDC can be linked back to those with an inclination toward central planning. While not overt in their support, mainly due to a lot of loud opposition to arriving at the 1984 surveillance state end goal, it does square the circle of how actors such as Warren can be simultaneously hostile to big banks and crypto’s vision of peer to peer finance ー it is because THEY want to control the rails. Warren got close to stating this in her campaign’s discussion of the ills of big banks where she argues as the alternative for government run banks like postal banks and covertly argues for CBDC by advocating that we need ‘real time payment technology’ such that banks don't have a monopoly on our paychecks.^[lviii]

You can see this view most overtly come full circle through calls for state-capitalism - namely, that “[r]obust democracy with true equality of access requires a degree of centralization of power in democratically controlled institutions.”^[lix] This stance rejects the decentralization of finance as a democratizing force, believing it would instead “reproduce [finance capitalism’s] worse aspects”.^[lx] Frankly, these are concerns to be reckoned with seriously - however, where we differ is the proposed remedy. These beliefs, that a powerful state is the best means of democratization are echoed in Saule Omarova's academic work on retail CBDCs as "the people's ledger" - a way to "democratize the financial system" and "allocate financial resources in a democratic economy".^[lxi] Though Warren has been careful in not tying herself as closely to these views, her support for this model has been echoed in her public comments praising a retail digital dollar issued by the Fed, her nomination… err, I mean Biden’s nomination of Omarova for OCC chair^[lxii], and her weaponizing national security concerns in finreg to advocate for a stronger state planning presence in the economy.

Ultimately, if you look at this from the perspective of someone with a desire for power, CBDCs would allow the State to exercise tight control over monetary policy and the ability to print -- powers that are crucial to the consolidation in economic planning. Given the skepticism for democratizing finance as creating defacto concentrations in power (which frankly, I worry about all the time), it is fascinating to see the calls for such CCP style consolidations in power at the State. This can only be seen through the lens of their inherent trust in themselves with this power. No one has seemed to wrestle with the fact that, in our (currently) non-authoritarian state, this means that every election may involve a turn of that power over to the other party to (presumably) abuse. Without more structural reform, this creates a kleptocracy funded by debt. It gambles the futures of taxpayers with the same zero accountability or measurement on ROI by design inherent in government programs that we know and love. Worse, with state-led reindustrialization, our success metric is simply notional "investment" (spending) against job creation, even if the unit economics don't make sense long term and will require continued subsidies in perpetuity. I am pretty sure we have seen this before ー spoiler: it plays out poorly

The losers in all of this are younger Americans ーever increasing numbers of Americans waiting on the baby boomers to retire and for their chance to shape their own futures. This, in my opinion, is what the crypto sector represents to a lot of us ー those who spent decades slotted into a cog role at large corporations and have opted out for a chance at self-determination. When I say I believe in tech is a democratizing force,^[lxiii] I mean it in the academic sense. Technological innovation disrupts power structures and entrenchment, creates new opportunities for participation in the economy and has been proven to produce positive feedback loops with democratization. “[D]emocratization is a driving force for technological change: most free countries, measured with liberal, participatory, and constitutional democracy indices, have a higher level of technology than less free and more autocratic countries. In fact, “democracy richness” generates a higher rate of technological innovation with fruitful effects for the wellbeing and wealth of nations. These findings and predictions lead to the conclusion that policy makers need to be cognizant of positive associations between democratization and technological innovation paths in order to support the modern economic growth and future technological progress of countries.”^[lxiv]

As someone who would like us to control our debt before we get into fiscal austerity and believes in innovation as a key driver of economic opportunity and something that makes America stand out, I do not welcome our aspiring class of central planning overlords.^[lxv] I am not enthusiastic about a state led, command economy,^[lxvi] future driven by an Executive branch that pursues its agenda through its own expansions of power, subverting the other branches. Given that state-led efforts to restructure and reshape national economies over history often go the way of failed science experiments,^[lxvii] as have similar (U.S. influenced) efforts of international development institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, I disinclined to personally become part of said science experiment.

Using yourself as a science experiment didn't go well for the dude in Morbius either.

All I can say is I find their approach to be doomed to fail. Any desire for retaining economic supremacy (which they have) will be stymied by their ‘return to mainstreet’ approach that puts us most at odds with where the global economy is headed. It's less a viable economic plan than it is a half-cooked response to Trump gaining working class votes.^[lxviii] This segment of the Democrat party has not thought through the tensions between their inclination to regulate and register absolutely everything in existence while ignoring costs on business in favor of examinations of societal costs in economic analysis around rulemaking and weighed this against their aversion to industry consolidation and the high cost of … everything.^[lxix] This tension was on display at a hearing on how we combat^[lxx] China where one of the speakers suggested that we can stay competitive on innovation in the future if we combat China through defensive measures only, such as the weaponization of tech transfer rules and trade restrictions. Noticeably absent from this toolset (since we now hate tech and industry) is any mention of continuing to support and foster innovation at home. I truly believe that we are dead on arrival if this is our whole plan to move forward.

Ultimately, I feel a certain way about being dragged into their version of a Chairman Mao style land reform initiative.^[lxxi] The psychology here is something to behold ー proponents of this vision must have a degree of generational wealth since I can’t imagine they view the brightest future for themselves and their children as being life-long factory workers. There is a day 1 McKinsey hire degree of hubris required to envision this future for others and then engage in unscrupulous efforts to gain normative influence to begin to implement their vision behind the backs of the voting public. While dogmatism in and of itself has long been a facet of policy, it tends to be tempered by centrists. In this administration, extremists from these groups, who did not campaign, run, and win on this platform, have been left unsupervised. Left to their own devices, they have displayed an unprecedented disregard for democratic processes and the rule of law as they seek to expand their influence and use the tools of the administrative state to accomplish their end goal. All the while cloaking themselves in patriotism, as harkening a return to a purer form of participatory governance. If this is truly the case, they should run for office and be explicit about their visions as well as their plans ー I would wager they are at odds with most of the younger generation. Most of us see our futures as dependent on our ability to continue to innovate and grow the pie.

III. The Bigger Picture: Fighting Technophobia & Fear-Induced Policy Positioning.

Technophobia. Defined by Cleveland Clinic as “an overwhelming fear of technology. People with technophobia may fear computers, cell phones or the powers of artificial intelligence. It is most common in older adults and people who are generally anxious about the future.”^[lxxii]

A. Typologies Among Technophobes.

Of course the Warrenites are not the only group involved in U.S. tech policy ー there are many differing visions and approaches that coalesce into a blurry unfocused effort among U.S. policymakers to retain world dominance while never really thinking through how.

The result is often indicative of an aging superpower coming up with the types of ideas aging superpowers come up with ... always looking backwards to what worked in the past. An exercise in futility to reclaim the glory days. At the center of a lot of tech-policy, particularly as it relates to anti-crypto efforts, there are two other groups I will focus on, which, in addition to the Warrenites, I have named for purposes of this article: the Institutionalists and the Octogenarians. These groups operate with different agendas but converge on an issue-by-issue basis in temporary alliances:

The Octogenarians. Our ruling class in Congress, who tend to hold office until their literal demise. Octogenarians, in line with the definition of technophobia, can be characterized by their significant apprehension towards technology, largely stemming from a lack of understanding and vulnerability to being influenced by competing narratives, as they struggle to distinguish factual information and evidence-based arguments from persuasive rhetoric.
The Institutionalists. As exemplified by figures like Chairman Gensler, Institutionalists have significantly benefited from the current system. They hold a declining-empire view anchored in past revelries that the status quo should be preserved. It follows that they place a high value on traditional institutions and aim to uphold the existing power dynamics, which are controlled by long-standing incumbent players. Essentially, Institutionalists, while less hostile to technology than Warrenites, are advocates for maintaining the establishment and resist changes that might disrupt the current balance of power or rule sets.

B. Know-Thy-Opponent.

Going back to the point of being effective in the policy space, understanding the broader dynamics at play can inform approach and be a key to understanding why certain hostile positions are taken. Especially where the stances of these various groups diverge on many issues but coalesce around a shared fear and hostility toward crypto has made them temporary allies where they converge -- this convergence can be identified the root cause of a lot of the randomly hostile and incoherent/ incongruent U.S. tech and crypto policy over the last several years, largely with them interacting and aligning as follows:

The Octogenarians are driven by fear and susceptible to arguments not supported by fact, the most recent of these being crypto as a means of money laundering and terrorism-finance. The flames of this fear are actively fanned by extreme dogmatic activist think tanks such as Better Markets who seek to discourage tech innovation.
These two groups converge with a preference for AARP-compatible low-risk market structure and investment strategies that willingly trade low yields and high fees for stability in earnings over growth-driven strategies (i.e. those strategies that can make a difference for younger generations seeking to generate new opportunities and a chance at upward mobility).
On this issue, Institutionalists are temporary allies who believe that the rails of finance should be helmed exclusively by big institutions and enact regulation to increase moats. They view crypto as a volatility disease the traditional markets can catch and far from believing in the ability of peer to peer transactions, they think everyday Americans should have no place in finance outside of highly structured retail-oriented low yield, high-fee products as a means to keep them out of harm’s way.

Understanding where they diverge is perhaps equally important. While Warrenites may seem aligned with Chair Gensler, their antipathy for the financial industry makes Gensler a tense ally. The inherent clash of their worldviews was front and center at a recent virtual conference by Better Markets entitled 15th Anniversary Lehman Collapse. Gensler joined for a segment entitled “Can Too-Big-To-Fail be ended?”^[lxxiii] and was prompted on his views on preventing the next financial crisis. Wholly unaware of his surroundings, Gensler proceed to give a glimpse into his perspective, which can be summarized as follows (i) market bubbles and crises are inevitable; (ii) it follows he views his mandate mainly as investor protection, or rather getting mom and pop out of the way so that they don't get harmed, cause finbros are gonna finbro.

“The way I like to think of it is the neck of the hourglass where money is flowing through but also risk is flowing ー the neck of the hourglass is called finance - but what happens when that concentration or is is in the middle … many an economic crisis over centuries is about that middle of the hourglass .. the great depression and 2008… I would say it's rarely that its solely banks or non-banks [but] banks and non-banks are both at the neck of that hourglass and can concentrate risk and often financial fragility comes from a lot of the marketplace leaning in one direction, monocultures, [so] we [can] talk about network interconnectedness, we talk of course about regulatory gaps… [but] I wish I could tell the audience that won't happen again…the business cycle/ the economy is going to expand and contract at times… were going to have failures of banks and non-banks alike and our role as securities regulator or any financial regulator is to try to lower the risk of those happening but also being aware the economic reality [is] that we will have stress periods in the future … how do we limit the effect on the investing public and working public that people don't lose their jobs, lose their homes as innocent bystanders to the highways of finance.”

We have seen Gensler’s Goldman showing at times before. He has indicated throughout his tenure as SEC chair that he views volatility in the crypto market as a potentially contagious element that could infect and harm his precious “gold standard” capital markets and he views really the current system as something enshrined and to be preserved rather as something that needs to be disrupted. However, the above quote is the starkest unveiling of his Goldman-molded world view -- the highways of finance should be reserved for the large traditional financial players and the rest of us should endeavor to get out of the way. It is a worldview that is diametrically opposed to p2p finance and disintermediation. Rather, he views every day Americans as bystanders to finance and his role is to protect them (literally the meme) from opportunities that lead to exposure when the market inevitably blows up. He also likely views the attempts to strangle crypto and cut it off from the traditional markets such as SAB 121 and the custody rule he is focused on everyday investors (literally 401k and pension fund type investments) not being disrupted by instability in the market and uses rulemaking as a means to heighten regulation and registration requirements without real economic analysis because the goal is creating moats and consolidating finance activities under large institutional actors. He seeks to control the gates through which actors can access the markets - this manifested itself in the SEC ATS rule making (and ghost writing the IOSCO DeFi crypto recommendations to comport with their stance); the SEC attacks at exchanges & staking; and the SEC ETF approval debacle and the recently approved SEC dealer rule, which expands registration regimes to market actors deploying their own capital, AMMs and a host of new market actors, vastly expands the reach of the administrative state. The dealer rule was recently pushed through on party lines by democrats citing ‘even playing fields’ without ever manifesting a clear articulation of the need for the rule, any economic analysis around the rule,^[lxxiv]or how the rule might succeed in meeting the proposed need.^[lxxv]

IV. When Fear Bears Fruit: A Chronology of these Forces at Work.

In addition to the constant weaponization of the tools of the administrative state and a net erosion in the rule of law as it relates to crypto, we also get various volleys from Gensler and the Octogenarian crowd ranging from arbitrary and devoid of analysis to vast overreaches of power. This has manifested itself, over the past year in, what we can categorize as direct assisination attempts/ general hostility and refusals to let the tech do what it is meant to do ー while the techniques differ, as someone who spends a lot of time on policy, I can attest that whatever tactic is used, it amounts to an incredible waste of time, energy and resources & these efforts are at the same time counterproductive and futile. Do we really need to spend time and effort responding to an “emergency” U.S. Energy Information Administration mandatory information request targeting cryptomining prompted by... concerns about Bitcoin’s price increase and a cold spell.^[lxxvi]

“EIA has determined that… public harm is reasonably likely if normal clearance procedures are followed. As evidence, the price of Bitcoin has increased roughly 50% in the last three months, and higher prices incentivize more cryptomining activity, which in turn increases electricity consumption. At the time of this writing, much of the central United States is in the grip of a major cold snap that has resulted in high electricity demand. The combined effects of increased cryptomining and stressed electricity systems create heightened uncertainty in electric power markets, which could result in demand peaks that affect system operations and consumer prices, as happened in Plattsburgh, New York in 2018. Such conditions can materialize and dissipate rapidly.”

If cryptomining is in danger of collapsing power grids on a national level, please let me know so I can do my civic duty and unplug my hair dryer because it's an all hands on deck situation. Coming back to reality, using these types of unprecedented measures to launch targeted harassment campaigns against specific industries is, for lack of a better term, clown-like behavior. This politicization and weaponization only serves to cheapen the legitimacy of these offices and increases our collective disillusionment in government. However, some forces within the administration are more than willing to get down into the dirt to further their agenda. From general unfriendliness and uneven application of scrutiny as a disfavored industry, we continue weathered efforts to undermine the industry from all fronts.

A. Fighting on All Fronts: A Case Study in Bad Faith.

Some of the more underhandedly creative were the attempts to use banking regulators to cut crypto off from the traditional markets and financial system. The 2023 debanking saga was arguably kicked off with Warren, who partnered with Cohodes, a short seller who sought to profit on collapse,^[lxxvii] to FUD Silvergate as part of a series of actions leading to the eventual February 2023 banking run by targeting Silvergate Bank in public-facing letters in December and January of 2022 designed to undermine confidence in the solvency of the institution.^[lxxviii] As pointed out by a now apparently scrubbed from the internet article from Blockworks, “[t]hree U.S. Senators, led by Warren, decided to send an unpleasant letter to Silvergate a few weeks back after the collapse of FTX caused a substantial (though initially orderly) withdrawal of capital from its reserves.I’m not going to delve too deeply into the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Senators’ questions…. [t]he real issue here is that three sitting U.S. Senators helped undermine confidence in Silvergate, specifically because it had a crypto-focused clientele. This is the important part: They deliberately, and publicly, targeted a bank because its customers were having a tough time.”^[lxxix] She also in December sent a slew of letters to banking regulators to raise concerns about the ties between the banking industry and crypto firms^[lxxx] before introducing the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022 and starting an extended quest to try to characterize crypto as at the root of money laundering and the perpetuation of crime/terrorism.

Letting no good crisis go to waste, when the banks failed and crypto got debanked, she then somehow positioned herself as a tough-on-banks hero fighting against reckless industry greed, rewriting the narrative to blame crypto^[lxxxi] as she used the opportunity to:

Try to oust Jerome Powell, saying he had failed at being Fed Chairman^[lxxxii] and install one of her loyalists,
Scapegoat crypto as a root cause of the Signature^[lxxxiii] collapse, when it had almost nothing to do with the inherent nature of banking crypto as an industry as a root source,^[lxxxiv]
Position the collapse as due to ‘reputational’ issues due to the association with crypto;
- Then, if you are prone to conspiracy, you might draw connections from her personnel is policy to infer that ripple effects were encouraged as banks sought (or were forced) to distance themselves, including through an FDIC asset sale to NYCB that excluded crypto accounts (that looks like it is going well), effectively debanking the customer segment, and a FDIC post-mortem on the incident, which later blamed the collapse on ‘reputational’ issues caused by a relationship with the crypto industry (as the same were largely fanned by Warren and the administration).
Next, position the crisis as vindicating her fears about deregulation and how upset she is at having been proved right to set up her push through additional legislation to forward her (and Better Market’s) agenda of making banking boring again by limiting the activities of banks to custodying savings of everyday Americans.^[lxxxv]
Then leverage the episode as part of a continued attempt to demonize the crypto industry as rife with crime and a source of potential financial contagion.

Then, standing back as these efforts (and, again if you are prone to conspiracy, many other less public efforts) bear more fruit. These have the effect of severing the industry from its banking relationships.^[lxxxvi] While we are still experiencing gaslighting from policymakers that Operation Chokepoint 2.0 never happened, it is amazing that such a lack of coordinated efforts produced such widespread results. Banks were skittish, while only anecdotal information has surfaced, some bank reps were admitting they were told (but could not put in writing) to sever the relationship. So while this is the stuff of tin foil hat aficionados, the behavior was prevalent to the degree that almost everyone I know in the industry had to go scrambling for new banking relationships and redundancies.

I see her and her allies as a key source of fear-based contagion and hostilities among the Octogenarians, largely from a national security angle. Outside of this instance, we have had to endure Warren’s ramped up legislative assassination attempts and efforts to spread unsubstantiated FUD around crime and terrorism (I believe she blamed the entire fentanyl crisis on us in this period)^[lxxxvii] to advance her Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, which as it turns out was drafted by the American Bankers Association at her and Marshall’s request.^[lxxxviii] The bill, which would effectively ban crypto, attempts to impose KYC rules on parties that cannot comply such as miners and validators with a goal of killing permissionless tech by requiring bank-style surveillance and reporting at the infra layer. Warren has stoked natsec fervor and technophobia to gain co-sponsors and when presented with corrected facts from the WSJ article, she continues to actively lie about the metrics and the risks. Notably, her fear-based campaign to wield natsec as a sword has borne fruit and manifested other fear-driven reactive efforts by the Octogenarians, such as an inclination towards CBDC initiatives, Lynch’s ECash proposal and Foster’s insanely authoritarian preference ‘digital license plate’ where you only can use a State issued wallet stamped with (essentially) your social security number.^[lxxxix]

In all, this group is marked by bad faith and not worth engaging except to push back. They can be dangerous in both direct attacks where you see them coming, indirect attacks where they weaponize the administrative state to create an overtly hostile environment as well as their ability to create narratives that then have influence in policy circles. On the last point, what has been shocking is really the rudderless willingness to outright lie and manipulate narratives in furtherance of their agenda. Exhibit 500, here is a tweet from the Better Markets CEO^[xc] blaming the SEC twitter hack and resulting harm on… the crypto industry.

B. Learning Curves & Tech Incoherence.

Sure grandma let's get you to bed | I ALWAYS GO BACKWARDS TO GO FORWARD THE FUTURE IS SCARY. ALRIGHTY YOU’RE TIRED GRANDMA | image tagged in sure grandma let's get you to bed | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

More generally, there are stances in Congress largely driven by an inherent lack of understanding, including around why existing rule sets are poor frameworks for disintermediated technology. Meaning, when lied to, they believe party-aligned public interest groups and Chairman Gensler when he says that no new rules are needed. A large segment of policymakers are any combination of over-their-heads, disinterested (it isn't a pet issue or important to their reelection) and/or following party lines when it comes to crypto and tech policy in general. Notably, there are glimmers of hope among the younger members of both parties, who are much more open to advancing innovation and empowering American entrepreneurialism. Dealing with the phase out of the Octogenarian crowd, is more of a waiting game for a power shift to take place - not just in politics but largely on a societal level.

In the meantime, though the more brazen bad faith attacks are the most obvious, we can also fall victim to a death by a thousand cuts from the Institutionalists. These are the opposite of tech neutral attempts to apply existing paper-based rule sets, not updated for the digital age and mandating reintermediation. These are arguments that, if inclined to technophobia, feel safer. There is a comfort in entrenching ourselves in what we know as opposed to grappling with harder issues. The obligation to legislate is lulled into complacency by assurances that there is nothing new here, no need to have to dig in and deal with the substance. It manifests itself in inclinations to apply the Securities Laws to the industry as a whole and then when asked, the Commodities laws as well, and then the BSA and then just slap every existing framework on them all at once without starting to identify that what you have done is problematic. It manifests itself in letting the SEC kill all the consumer facing use cases and then berate the over-financialization of the industry without examining your own role. Policy has consequences -- policymakers are not innocent bystanders in this process and cannot abdicate themselves from all responsibility for the incentive structures created. It is in fact their job to be aware of these incentive structures as they shape policy.

And so these challenges manifest themselves in a host of incongruent positions. They crop up in large existential pieces of legislation and the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ variety. As we can see with the SEC proposed rules around qualified custodians, technophobia has manifested itself in a deep unwillingness to look at the digital paradigm and how concepts of custody need reexamining. Instead of doing this hard work, we are grappling with a reintermediation mandate that applies an outdated framework predicated on physical custody, where, as a matter of law, cryptoassets will need to be stored at banks and lockups enforced through contractual escrow arrangements.

Does it matter that these banks are not crypto native and less poised to deal with crypto than industry-developed solutions such as programmatic lockups? Apparently not.
Does it matter that this introduces costs, erects barriers, and that there already aren't many solutions on the market? That given the requirements, the rules may result in a denial of service where there may not be providers willing and able to provide these services? Apparently not.
Does it matter that this now re-introduces custodial risks we saw in FTX and Blockfi where user assets may have uncertain futures in bankruptcy proceedings? Apparently not.

So it begs the same types of questions again:

What is the goal of policy? Policy in the immediately preceding case should, with an eye to the costs, in this case on competition and retained incentives to innovate, be based on a desire to make users safer.
Does the policy accomplish the stated goal of making users safer? Plainly it does not - in a best case scenario, these newly entrenched intermediaries will use solutions already in the market on the back-end and then upcharge ー technology which has had its total addressable market reduced.
Is it faster, cheaper and more efficient? No. It is inefficient and introduces more costs and risk.

V. Action Items - Where We Go From Here.

A. How Do We Best Approach Policy Work in this Environment?

If the above sounds like a groundhog’s day nightmare of fighting tooth and nail against stupidity labeled as ‘sensible’ policy, you're not far off from where I have arrived. Working on policy in crypto has done untold damage to my faith in U.S. democratic institutions outside of checks and balances.

More productively, and to the “are we making an impact” point, playing defense is key in this environment. Although I wish we were able to spend our time and resources working productively to move things forward (toward sensible policy frameworks), given the reality of where we are, pushing back and countering attacks is not a waste of our time in these instances. Is it thankless and miserable? Yes. But as a result of the sheer dysfunction in policymaking, crypto has been unable to rely on relief from any branch of government outside of the courts. While results there are unpredictable, they give reason to hope. Most recently, efforts to obtain a TRO against the EIA’s reporting requirements proved effective with the EIA ultimately withdrawing the requirement and agreeing to destroy any data collected.^[xci]

What is harder is to evaluate constructive opportunities for meaningful engagement. The most fruitful relationships have been (often) younger, tech inclined members of Congress but politics is often an exercise in trying to win over the more skeptical hearts and minds. For policy professionals in the crypto space, this has materialized in ‘education’ campaigns and confront the fact that many in Congress may not even know how to use flip phones. For better or worse, even if these efforts gain ground, Congress has largely been inclined toward inaction (and given the education issue combined with the inclination to just duplicate out existing structures as we saw in FIT, this is likely a good thing). Though I am a little bit nihilistic on such efforts, that time spent is still not as fruitless as trying to bridge ideological barriers. Efforts to engage Warrenites in good faith are dead on arrival. As are efforts to engage policymakers who think tech neutral means that the use of technology is neat as long as it can be stuffed into existing rule sets and leveraged by existing intermediaries are dead on arrival.

As a small player in policy relative to more mature industries,^[xcii] there are limits to our ability to influence policy and even fewer public good advocacy resources to spread around. We therefore need to pick our tactics and our battles carefully. I find the best approach to be an exercise in matching energy ーengaging those that want to engage in good faith and standing up to those seeking harm (including those that engage in bad faith tactics). We have had a number of lessons learned, including that with respect to the legislative process (DCCPA and FIT), we are not going to be the last ones in the room with a say on larger and loftier bills ー these huge efforts often unravel into overengineered and unworkable frameworks with special interest groups largely dictating the revisions until ‘compromises’ are reached in the final stages, with poor results overall. We have had increasing success in defensive and offensive use of the courts, including using comment letters to set up potential litigation against overreach.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

TLDR of Effective Use of Time on Policy Work:

Emphasize defensive strategies on executive branch action - pursue legal avenues, including comment letters, for defense and litigation against overreach.
On the legislative branch:
1. Focus on younger, tech-savvy Congress members for engagement & conduct education campaigns to bridge knowledge gaps among policymakers.
2. Pursue legislative relief in the 3-5 page range (Emmer has been great at this).

Choose battles carefully, prioritizing good faith engagement.

Outside of pure politics, we have at times been our worst enemy on the policy front and can do a lot to help ourselves by living up to our own expectations ー continuing to build productive use cases and doing what we can to implement best practices. The current memecoin speculative bubble is not our best look but I see it as more of a symptom of generations-wide financial nihilsm than any firm referendum on the future of our space.^[xciii] There is a lot of work to be done - crypto in particular is a young space. It isnt ready for prime time and has maturing to do ーto quote Dune once more because this is my article and I can: "[s]how me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." We have had plenty of self-inflicted crises and there is much work at hand here. However, instead of being able to focus its efforts on building towards a future and being given the policy envelope to separate out bad faith actors from compliant, productive good faith projects, we are stagnating in an environment where no compliance effort is rewarded.

Still, I hold out hope that, as a first step, we can agree from a policy perspective that it is not being an e/acc to suggest that you let the tech do what it is designed to do - to acknowledge advances in efficiency and embrace progress. In these efforts, it is an exercise in education - engaging in good faith and making common sense arguments why policy does or does not make sense based on how the tech or a given process functions. More broadly, government could have a more broadly enabling role if we could get consensus that there are features of the technology that are worthy of preserving and enshrining ー short of asking for a regulatory regime, I am just asking for policymakers to stop fighting tooth and nail to cling to paper processes and be forever looking backwards in any regulations that are developed. Otherwise, standards that are government imposed are going to be predicated on reintermediation and trustful solutions to the general harm of everyone.

As to competing visions for the future, for those who believe in technology and American innovation as being key to our competitiveness and a viable economy, it is so painful to engage in these efforts knowing that the hurdles are immense. Of note, when I say competing, I do not think it must come at the expense of efforts to produce semiconductors and reinvigorate the manufacturing sector. These are also worthy endeavors to diversify the economy and grow the pie. However, as it relates to certain constituencies, it is a zero sum proposition and clear that good faith dialogue is a waste of resources. Though there could be progress made on shared concerns,^[xciv] after experiencing a lot of the above discussion first hand, I have no hope of constructive engagement with the Warrenites.

B. More Broadly, Where Do We Go From Here on Economic Policy?

The Biden administration and Democrats seem to be at a loss why people are unhappy with this administration on the economy because they look at job numbers and they look statistically sound^[xcv]. Let me spell it out for the people in the back ー the ability to have 4 different gig economy jobs while barely making rent with six roommates is not applaudable success. Yes, whatever the machinations that have gone into an optically soft landing have smoothed out and stabilized the post-COVID economy (if you do not look at the national debt). However, looking again at the root cause of financial nihilism ー America’s younger generation wants an economic plan that creates for them the chances their parents had - you know, to own houses and eat out at restaurants with some regularity but also a chance at upward mobility.

So, as the Biden administration looks around for an answer as to why its economic policies are not catching, I would encourage the administration to look at the vision it is selling - in particular to the non-AARP portion of America. In terms of policy, there seems to be an age divide, where younger members of the Democratic party, such as Ritchie Torres get it and the Octogenarians do not. Many pro-tech Americans are left leaning and are feeling increasingly isolated ーthe left could align on antitrust policy and harness decentralized tech and ideas to counterbalance too big to fail.^[xcvi] The left could also recognize their own complicitness in too big to fail and forcing consolidation through their regulate-all-the-things stance, as most recently evidenced by the SEC dealer rule that was passed to “level the playing field” and extend registration requirements to a whole host of actors, without sufficient analysis of the need, such that every actor in the market would have high compliance burdens. A smarter stance would be to scale regulation to impose the highest burdens on the largest actors, reduce barriers to entry and allow for new market entrants to thrive.

Instead of providing a rational counter to pro-big industry voices and policies, the Progressives don't seem to have met an industry they don’t hate ー sure there is a lot to improve about America but when it comes down to it, we fundamentally need to continue to grow the economy and create opportunities for higher paying jobs just to stay ahead of the debt burden. There should be serious thought given to reducing grift and spending as opposed to these progressive fever dreams about dismantling large industries wholesale. Calls to shut down the tech and finance industries are understandably alarming for people who actually, you know, need those private sector jobs. Warrenites are aware of this because they sanitize descriptions of their intentions in mixed company. So it should not be all that shocking to recognize that your dreams of the future are not “leaning into the will of the people'' if you have to hide it. Or that your plans of the government handing out factory jobs to our youth in a state led economy might be a future we don't all emphatically buy into. It's actually hard to see how anyone might yearn for that future other than those who envision themselves as the job hander outters as opposed to the job handees.

Divisiveness and extremism of any sort is unhealthy for the country. Perhaps more relevant to the Democratic party looking for votes, it is also isolating to voters. You can imagine how it might be off-putting even as a lifelong democrat to find yourself on the other end of progressive contempt - as the vast majority of the U.S. populace seems to be dehumanized by this constituency as a means to invalidate their views, hopes and dreams. We all know about soulless corporate scumbags that only seek profits but this seems to have expanded into an inherent distrust and villainization of private industry on the whole where no for profit enterprise can meet purity tests. A small tent indeed. Those who believe in technology are labeled techbros,^[xcvii] there is a growing sense among progressives that private sector innovation in technology is somehow the root of all evil and their voices are not welcome in the echo chamber. In general, treating whole swaths of the population with derision does not tend to work out well for any democracy attempting to function.

Infographic: Are Polarized Politics Pushing More People Independent? | Statista — caption...

Yet, as if this next election cycle wasn't depressing enough, the Biden administration, by ceding finreg policy to Warren and her hand-selected ideologues, has further isolated the Democratic party by making a choice to reelect Biden as an affirmative choice to opt into whateverthehellscape vision these fringe groups have been able to largely dictate in tech and finreg policy throughout the past several years.^[xcviii] I can imagine they are only getting warmed up. On reelection, we should have every confidence they will remain empowered given the Biden administration’s general inability to read the room and to pivot.^[xcix] The result is a no-win choice in the next election.^[c] Neither party seems capable of grasping why their platform might not be compelling - it is because, in our gerontocracy, both sides seem incapable of understanding that the younger generations want opportunities. Many people, myself included, think that our debt-riddled country’s ability to preserve, much less expand the pie depends on our ability to stay competitive and continue to innovate. In all, I would ask the administration to reevaluate its buy-in to this uncompelling vision of our economic future and competitiveness as a nation as well as the wholesale export of domestic policies to unelected fringe elements of their party - they won 7% of the vote for a reason.^[ci] I view a fundamental freedom in America that distinguishes us as the freedom to innovate. Our values around promoting creativity, imagination, innovation and entrepreneurship are essential for preventing entrenchment, stagnation and promoting economic growth in an advanced economy. We have always believed in guardrails and responsibility in the market, it promotes the rule of law ー perverting these guardrails into weapons to kill entrepreneurship has led us far from the path. It has weakened the rule of law and the respect for institutions of government.

We seem to be going nowhere fast in terms of workable solutions or sensible structural reform; nevertheless, my plea remains for us to develop sensible tech policy. Crypto in particular needs a policy framework that promotes decentralization and disintermediation to meaningfully advance the promise and health of the space. The most effective means of promoting this seems to be through support of younger pro-tech voices and increased dialogue as the mix of voices in Congress will inevitably turn over. Barring some sort of necromancy via AI dystopia where representatives are kept in office beyond their death,^[cii] time is on our side. As the political landscape evolves, with a growing number of independent voters, political parties must adapt to remain relevant. Failing to do so risks alienating the next generation - and it won't just be a matter of crypto proponents voting as single issue voters ー business as usual stands to isolate entire generations of younger Americans, eager for innovation and self-determination in technology and beyond.

I want to thank (by Twitter handle) @MarcGoldich and @lex_node for your thoughtful (largely conscripted) reviews of my rants and endless support over the years. Though all of the crazy is my own, (and thank you to @0xMakesy for adding to it), I want to thank Justin Slaughter (@JBSDC) for his thoughtful insights & always being willing to engage. I highly recommend following them all.

^[i] FinCEN, Proposal of Special Measure Regarding Convertible Virtual Currency Mixing, as a Class of Transactions of Primary Money Laundering Concern, October 23, 2023, available at

https://www.regulations.gov/docket/FINCEN-2023-0016/document. The proposed CVC mixer rulemaking attempts to attach the presumption of illegality to all on-chain activities npt conducted by regulated financial institutions. See twenty-four page response I spent a month drafting with a LeXpunK working group on why all on-chain transactions cannot possibly constitute ‘mixing’ activity and aren't even remotely connected to money laundering. https://github.com/LeXpunK-Army/Activism/blob/main/LXP%20Final%20FinCen%20Virtual%20Mixer%20Comment%20Letter%201-22.pdf. The LeXpunK letter uses an approach that we have more recently adopted -- translating tech into functional arguments on why the rulemaking is insane to try to bridge gaps in education among policy makers (more on this later).

^[ii]Team Warren, End Wall Street's Stranglehold on Our Economy, Medium, July 18, 2019, https://medium.com/@teamwarren/end-wall-streets-stranglehold-on-our-economy-70cf038bac76. (Warren argued to “rein in Wall Street” by (1) stopping private equity’s “legalized looting” through policies intended to shrink the industry, including putting them on the hook for debt and downside so they only make it if the company flourishes; holding them responsible for pensions of companies they by; limiting dividends and eliminating monitoring fees; changing tax rules so no preferential tax on debt; modifying bankruptcy rules so workers get priority over executive bonuses; requiring lenders to retain risk on loans to private equity owned companies; getting rid of carried interest; (2) “reforming incentives to stop useless speculation” such as rebuilding the wall between commercial banks and investment banks such that taxpayers do not subsidize the investment banking activities; exec comp clawbacks for bankers.

^[iii] See Pluralist, "Who Really Is the President? – Opinion," published on May 31, 2022, https://pluralist.com/who-really-is-the-president-opinion/(discussing concerns about President Biden's control and influence over his administration and suggesting Biden may not fully command his policies, instead delegating significant responsibilities to his staff, who are influenced by far-left ideologies).

^[iv] See also Zachary Warmbrodt and ‘Most Influential Voice’: Warren’s Network Spreads Throughout Biden Administration, Politico (Mar. 15, 2021), https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/15/elizabeth-warren-aides-biden-administration-475653 (details how Senator Elizabeth Warren's influence is significantly felt in President Biden's administration through her “personnel is policy’ approach paying dividends as she was able to secure the appointment of her protégés and allies to key positions).

^[v] Dylan Matthews, Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign and policies, Vox, June 26, 2019,https://www.vox.com/2019/6/26/18715614/elizabeth-warren-2020-presidential-campaign-policies. (her platform is distinguishable for its “singular focus on the cycle between the accumulation of wealth and the transformation of wealth into political power that begets more wealth”).

^[vi] Elizabeth Warren, Plans After Trump, ElizabethWarren.com, accessed March 4, 2024, https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/after-trump. More on these experts later.

^[vii] See ‘Most Influential Voice’, supra note 4 (“No one should be surprised Sen. Warren has virtually hand-picked the financial and other regulatory nominations she cares deeply about.” The appointments “confirm that Sen. Warren will be the most influential voice in the financial policy debate under the new administration”).

^[viii] Id.

^[ix] Id. (emphasis added)

^[x] Politico Staff, Biden eyes Rohit Chopra for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Politico, January 17, 2021,https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/17/biden-rohit-chopra-consumer-bureau-460086.

^[xi] Bharat Ramamurti, a former adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren, joined President-elect Joe Biden's economic team as a member of the National Economic Council (NEC). Upon his departure in late 2023, another prominent Warren aide succeeded him, underscoring Warren's influence within Biden's administration. Additionally, Leandra English, known for her work with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), serves as Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff for the NEC. See 'Top Warren aide to join Biden's economic team,' The Hill, October 23, 2023, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4270599-top-warren-aide-to-join-bidens-economic-team/

^[xii] Biden appointed Sasha Baker, a former as a policy advisor for Senator Warren on national security issues before joining Warren’s 2020 campaign as chief national security advisor. She is now deputy undersecretary of defense for policy in the Biden administration. https://www.defense.gov/About/Biographies/Biography/Article/2938818/sasha-n-baker/

^[xiii] The appointment of Julie Siegel and Wally Adeyemo, both known allies of Senator Elizabeth Warren, to significant positions within the Treasury Department underscores Warren’s influence. Julie Siegel, initially serving as a banking and economic policy aide to Senator Warren, was appointed as the Treasury Department's deputy chief of staff. She later transitioned to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and has been considered for additional roles within the Treasury. This move demonstrates the fluidity and interconnectedness of Warren's network within key economic policy positions across the administration. These appointments broadly reflect a larger strategy of integrating experienced, like-minded individuals from Senator Warren's orbit into crucial economic policy roles to shape the administration's approach to banking, economic policy, and consumer protection.

See President Warren’s Government, The Wall Street Journal (July 13, 2021), https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-warrens-government-11626474760; A Big Year for the BSA, Politico Morning Money Newsletter (December 22, 2023), https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2023/12/22/a-big-year-for-the-bsa-00133017; Senator Warren Introduces Wally Adeyemo Nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Treasury to the Senate Finance Committee, warren.senate.gov, https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-introduces-wally-adeyemo-nominee-for-deputy-secretary-of-the-treasury-to-the-senate-finance-committee; Biden Adds New Members to His White House Economic Team, The Wall Street Journal (December 18, 2020), https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-adds-new-members-to-his-white-house-economic-team-11608559236.

^[xiv] These alliances have, to some degree, broken down. Senator Warren has openly criticized Yellen for her stance on bank mergers, suggesting a divergence from Warren's more aggressive approach to banking oversight. Yellen's support for Jerome Powell, despite Warren's calls for his removal, and her moderate position on cryptocurrency regulation, contrast with Warren's stances. Similarly, Gensler's positions on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards and the approval of Bitcoin ETFs have led to disagreements with Warren. While Warren and other Democrats have pressed Gensler for strong climate disclosure rules, reports suggest Gensler has considered scaling back certain requirements amid concerns about litigation risks. Warren's criticism of the SEC's approval of multiple spot Bitcoin ETFs further highlights these tensions. See discussion infra notes 34-36 and accompanying text. See Declan Harty, Warren, Whitehouse Lead Democrats in Pressing Gensler for Strong Climate Rule, Politico, March 6, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/06/democrats-press-gensler-climate-rule-00085473 and See Elizabeth Warren to Janet Yellen: You're Wrong on Bank Mergers, Politico, June 27, 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/27/elizabeth-warren-to-janet-yellen-youre-wrong-on-bank-mergers-00103786.

^[xv] Among the voices contributing to the policy discourse, certain think tanks and members of what some refer to as a "policy fifth estate" stand out for advocating distinctive, sometimes sharply defined agendas. Organizations such as Better Markets, with other groups like the Open Markets Institute and the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) often supporting similar ideologies. These entities play a significant role in shaping policy debates, representing a spectrum of views that influence regulatory and economic policies at various levels of governance. An example of these views can be found https://medium.com/@teamwarren/end-wall-streets-stranglehold-on-our-economy-70cf038bac76.

^[xvi] For instance, Open Markets Institute, in its words, works to address threats to our democracy, individual liberties, and our national security from today’s unprecedented levels of corporate concentration and monopoly power” , Americans for Financial Reform , The Washington Center for Equitable Growth describes itself as “a non-profit research and grantmaking organization dedicated to advancing evidence-backed ideas and policies that promote strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth.” Another key voice in advancing the progressive vision of the economy is Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. See, e.g. https://theintercept.com/2022/08/19/deconstrcuted-economy-dean-baker/.

^[xvii] “We use the term “deliverism” to describe the presumption of a linear and direct relationship between economic policy and people’s political allegiances. Originally coined by Matt Stoller and expanded on by David Dayen, the word broadly describes an approach to governing that focuses on enacting and implementing policies to improve people’s lives. Stoller and Dayen situate the concept as an alternative to popularism, arguing that it’s not enough for progressives to simply talk about popular policies—they must also actually deliver on the policies they claim to support. In exchange for enacting these policies, deliverism holds, voters will reward progressives at the ballot box.” The Death of Deliverism, Democracy Journal, June 22, 2023, https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/the-death-of-deliverism/.

^[xviii] Id.

^[xix] Id.

^[xx] Id.

^[xxi] Id.

^[xxii]David Dayden, Joe Biden Is Unhappy About the Day One Agenda, The American Prospect, December 16, 2020, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/joe-biden-is-unhappy-about-the-day-one-agenda/.

^[xxiii] David Dayden, Election Executive Actions for a Democratic Presidency, The American Prospect, November 10, 2020,https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/election-executive-actions-democratic-presidency/.

^[xxiv]Arguing forcing these are necessary for elections, see https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/progressive-caucus-unveils-its-day-one-agenda/ (“With the demise of the Build Back Better Act, the need to use executive action became more urgent, assuming the Democrats want to cobble together the best record to run on in November.” (emphasis added)) that they are not muddying themselves when lying down with pigs to do exactly what we accuse Republicans of doing. “Since 1789, the legislative branch has been placing a set of powerful authorities in the president’s lap. It does not violate any notion of our system of government for the president to look for creative ways to use those authorities; in fact, it’s the very job description of the chief executive.” How Biden Could Give Everyone Medicare on His Own," The American Prospect, November 17, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/how-biden-could-give-everyone-medicare-on-his-own/.

^[xxv] https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda

^[xxvi]Max Moran, 277 Policies Biden Need Not Ask Permission, The American Prospect, July 28, 2020, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/277-policies-biden-need-not-ask-permission/.

^[xxvii] Supra note 24 (arguing that a section of the ACA designed to address asbestos exposure by a discrete provision offering Medicare eligibility to individuals subject to ‘environmental exposure’ could be used in the context of COVID to expand Medicare eligibility to all persons with COVID).

^[xxviii] Marcia Brown, Temporary Protected Status for All: Immigration, The American Prospect, December 9, 2020, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/temporary-protected-status-for-all-immigration/.

^[xxix] See https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf Mandate for Leadership crafted by a group called Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a consortium of right-wing organizations including the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Family Research Council.

^[xxx] Team Warren. "A Plan for Economic Patriotism." Medium, June 4, 2019, https://medium.com/@teamwarren/a-plan-for-economic-patriotism-13b879f4cfc7.

^[xxxi]Ahlborg, Matt, Twitter, January 5, 2024

https://twitter.com/MattAhlborg/status/1743412739031085403

(a netizen on Twitter connecting some conspiracy dots around Better Markets letter to the SEC to deny the ETF as part of a larger (albeit) unsuccessful push by Warren (“[t]he fact that@BetterMarkets, a special interest connected to @ewarren (who has been caught unethically coordinating softball questions to @GaryGensler), expended significant resources to put this letter together (in the 11th hour) makes me think we may yet get rugged”).

^[xxxii] See Omarova, Saule T., Bankers, Bureaucrats, and Guardians: Toward Tripartism in Financial Services Regulation (2012). Cornell Law Faculty Publications at 635-6.

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1010 (arguing for the role of public interest groups, referring to them as PIGs, in regulatory design as a means to combat regulatory capture).

^[xxxiii] See Personnel Is Policy. Democracy Journal, February 6, 2020, https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/personnel-is-policy/ (in a more candid moment of saying the quiet part out loud, asserting, “Trump himself used these tactics routinely. While they are underhanded, they are also, at this point, necessary. ” Jeff Spross, Joe Biden's Four-Year Plan." The American Prospect, November 20, 2020, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/joe-bidens-four-year-plan/.

^[xxxiv]Elizabeth Warren Slams SEC Over Decision to Allow Spot Bitcoin ETFs, Says Crypto Needs to Follow Money Laundering Rules," The Block, January 11, 2024 https://www.theblock.co/post/272158/elizabeth-warren-slams-sec-over-decision-to-allow-spot-bitcoin-etfs-says-crypto-needs-to-follow-money-laundering-rules.

^[xxxv] See Supra note 31.

^[xxxvi] "The @SECgov is wrong on the law and wrong on the policy with respect to the Bitcoin ETF decision," Warren said. "If the SEC is going to let crypto burrow even deeper into our financial system, then it's more urgent than ever that crypto follow basic anti-money laundering rules." Senator Warren, Twitter, January 11, 2024 https://x.com/SenWarren/status/1745561648218112249 (see also the community notes added to this post).

^[xxxvii] Sullivan, Jake. "Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Renewing American Economic Leadership at the Brookings Institution." The White House, 27 Apr. 2023, www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/04/27/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-on-renewing-american-economic-leadership-at-the-brookings-institution/ (“New Washington Consensus”).

^[xxxviii] Joe Biden's Four-Year Plan, supra note 33.

^[xxxix] Sullivan, Jake. "Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Renewing American Economic Leadership at the Brookings Institution," The White House, April 27, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/04/27/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-on-renewing-american-economic-leadership-at-the-brookings-institution/ (“the United States, under President Biden, is pursuing a modern industrial and innovation strategy—both at home and with partners around the world. One that invests in the sources of our own economic and technological strength, that promotes diversified and resilient global supply chains, that sets high standards for everything from labor and the environment to trusted technology and good governance, and that deploys capital to deliver on public goods like climate and health.

^[xl] See supra notes 2 and 30.

^[xli] Anecdotally, what was also fascinating for me as I researched, is the lack of information on their agenda that is publicly available other than their own promotional materials. It is almost as if they have scrubbed the internet of any third party consolidated opinions on their agendas, plans or work.

^[xlii]Better Markets, Annual Report 2022, https://bettermarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Better-Markets-Annual-Report-2022.pdf(described as “a non-profit, non-partisan, and independent organization founded in the wake of the catastrophic 2008 financial crisis to promote the public interest throughout the economic and financial policy and rulemaking process. We have participated in more than 200 rulemakings, many of the related lawsuits, testified in Congress numerous times and issued many reports and policy papers, among other things.”).

^[xliii] Crypto Is a Fraud on the Public: Financial Watchdog Explains Ties Between Crypto and the Banking Crisis," Institute for New Economic Thinking Perspectives Blog, May 11, 2023, https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/crypto-is-a-fraud-on-the-public-financial-watchdog-explains-ties-between-crypto-and-the-banking-crisis. See also Better Markets CEO Urges SEC to Reject Spot Bitcoin ETFs," Crypto News, January 6, 2024, https://crypto.news/better-markets-ceo-urges-sec-reject-spot-bitcoin-etfs/.

^[xliv] David Dayden, How to Dismantle For-Profit Colleges Without Congress, The American Prospect, June 2, 2022, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/how-to-dismantle-for-profit-colleges-without-congress.

^[xlv] Id.

^[xlvi]Sandeep Vaheesan, Unleash Anti-Monopoly Arsenal Update, The American Prospect, June 16, 2021, https://prospect.org/day-one-agenda/unleash-anti-monopoly-arsenal-update/.

^[xlvii] See, e.g., Evaluating Sources: Political Perspectives of Magazines and Journals, https://skylinecollege.edu/library/informationliteracy/evaluatingsources/political.php

^[xlviii] Warren continually argues against nominees and candidates for roles in government with conflicts of interest through ties to industry. See, e.g. https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/at-hearing-senator-warren-slams-medicare-and-social-security-public-trustee-nominee-over-shocking-and-deeply-unethical-financial-conflicts-of-interest and New Report from Senator Warren: Pentagon Alchemy: How Defense Officials Pass Through the Revolving Door and Peddle Brass for Gold, April 26, 2023, https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/icymi-at-hearing-warren-blasts-revolving-door-between-dod-and-giant-defense-contractors-calls-for-sweeping-ethics-legislation.

^[xlix] The Fifth Estate has been defined as the combination of think tanks, research institutes, scholarly networks, political parties and policy analysts. Chapter One: Think Tanks & Governance in the United States," in The Fifth Estate, Brookings Institution, September 13, 2016, available at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/chapter-one_-the-fifth-estate.pdf. See id. at at 46-48 (discussing the presence of partisan think tanks and funding by wealthy donors) and 51 (describing the expansion of influence “[t]oday, think tanks exist in ever- greater numbers and have garnered successes in influencing public policy; they interact with both the public and the government, ensuring the adoption of their policy recommendations.”).

^[l] In the context of the tripartite state, these actors “do not take seriously the possibility that anti-democratic forces could empower networks of individuals to act in ways that illegally manipulate and subvert democratic institutions and democracy as a whole. Also unexamined is the possibility that the institutionalization of such dynamics could fundamentally alter the nature of the liberal democratic state.” https://scholarshare.temple.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12613/539/TETDEDXGood-temple-0225E-13970.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y See also C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956. For a discussion of shifts in think tank funding and their impact on industry, see, e.g., Jim Zarroli, "Who Controls Think Tanks? Shift in Funding Highlights Changes in the Industry," NPR, September 20, 2017,https://www.npr.org/2017/09/20/551364067/who-controls-think-tanks-shift-in-funding-highlights-changes-in-the-industry. For an example discussion of ways to restore trust in the think tank sector, see "Restoring Trust in the Think Tank Sector," Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, https://quincyinst.org/research/restoring-trust-in-the-think-tank-sector/.

^[li] Regulators this year spoke of corporate power as a threat not just to economic freedom but political freedom, and argued for a diverse set of tools including trade, industrial and tax policy to counter the problem. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/16/how-some-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-regulators-are-trying-to-upend-the-economic-system-00141802

^[lii] Matthew Yglesias, Elizabeth Warren's 2020 presidential campaign and policies, Jun 26, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/6/26/18715614/elizabeth-warren-2020-presidential-campaign-policies

^[liii] For an example of a call to continue this, see, e.g., Max Greenwood, Cummings: The Democrats need to be a ‘big tent’ party, The Hill, April 21, 2017 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/329855-cummings-democrats-need-a-big-tent-to-be-effective/

^[liv] See Politico, ‘It’s not like she hates lobbyists’: Warren’s Senate record doesn’t match her campaign rhetoric, October 20, 2019,

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/20/elizabeth-warren-senate-lobbyists-record-051514. See also The Independent, February 5, 2020, Elizabeth Warren accused of hiding while getting off private jet, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/elizabeth-warren-jet-video-plane-trump-twitter-a9319961.html

^[lv] If you look at the arc of her career against that of Mitch McConnell’s (who started out as a pro-choice, pro-union moderate), they have similar arcs in their political careers from moderate to extremist positions while hunting power and prestige. See Michael Kruse, "Elizabeth Warren's Journey from 'Young Republican' to 2020 Presidential Candidate," Politico Magazine, April 12, 2019,https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/12/elizabeth-warren-profile-young-republican-2020-president-226613/.

^[lvi] Break down on the U.S. mixed economy available here https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/oecon/chap2.htm

^[lvii] Pulled from https://superrask.xyz/product_details/58355238.html.

^[lviii] See Supra note 2.

^[lix] See Michael A. McCarthy, A World Where Finance is Democratic, Noema Magazine, April 12, 2022, https://www.noemamag.com/a-world-where-finance-is-democratic/ “Far from democratizing finance via decentralization, equality of access in principle is just concentration of ownership in practice.”

^[lx] Id.

^[lxi] See Omarova, Saule T., The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy (October 20, 2020). Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-45, 74 Vanderbilt Law Review 1231 (2021), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3715735 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3715735

^[lxii]Emily Flitter, Biden’s Pick for Bank Regulator Worries Banks Are Getting Too Powerful, The New York Times, November 8, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/business/saule-omarova-comptroller-currency.html (while not claiming credit, she was very supportive, calling the choice “tremendous news” and saying “Saule is an excellent choice to oversee and regulate the activities of our nation’s largest banks, and I have no doubt she’ll be a fearless champion for consumers.”) See Hearing Before The Committee On Banking, Housing, And Urban Affairs United States Senate 117th Congress First Session on Nomination of: Saule T. Omarova, of New York, to be Comptroller of the Currency, November 18, 2021, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-117shrg48204/pdf/CHRG-117shrg48204.pdf

^[lxiii] This phrase can be employed in a variety of contexts, this article talks about tech as a leverage point for grassroots participation in policymaking. See Tech as a Democratizing Force: The Rise of AI Facilitated Activism, https://members.delphidigital.io/feed/tech-as-a-democratizing-force-the-rise-of-ai-facilitated-activism

^[lxiv] Mario Coccia, Democratization is the driving force for technological and economic change, Technological Forecasting and Social Change,Volume 77, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 248-264

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0040162509000833.

^[lxv] Kuttner, Robert. "Reclaiming the Deep State." The American Prospect, 4 Oct. 2022, prospect.org/day-one-agenda/oira-reclaiming-the-deep-state (seeking to “maximize opportunities during periods when progressives govern” and arguing for the OMB’s OIRA to use cost benefit analysis to make agency rulemaking more bulletproof in court by looking at environmental harm, harm to the poor etc as opposed to just focusing on harm to corporations as just one means to “systematically tak[e] back the regulatory state”). The article also simultaneously cautions against entrenchment of norms/policies as a negative when it comes to Republican policies while exploring how to increase progressive entrenchment so that “progressives [can] best structure criteria for good regulations, so that they are not undone as soon as the pro-business party takes power.”

^[lxvi]See Twitter Roosevelt Institute Report accompanying interview now that the U.S. is “3 years into a new industrial policy experiment”

https://twitter.com/toddntucker/status/1757435751367622822

^[lxvii] Linn, Johannes F. "State versus Market: Forever a Struggle?" Brookings, 23 Oct. 2006, www.brookings.edu/articles/state-versus-market-forever-a-struggle/(“Under central planning, the state plays a dominant role in both the productive and the social spheres. While this can help create a more egalitarian society, painful experience has also shown that the system over the longer term does not generate robust economic growth, even as it is well adapted to a war economy or to generate a “big push” for a limited time. Hence, the pressure generally has been to move away from central planning unless a repressive regime maintains the system in its rigid planning mode.”) See also Vladimir Popov, Chinese and Russian Economies Under Central Planning: Why the Difference in Outcomes?,

https://academic.oup.com/book/27394/chapter-abstract/197187033 and And Atlantic Council, False promises: The authoritarian development models of China and Russia, January 11, 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/false-promises-the-authoritarian-development-models-of-china-and-russia/.

^[lxviii] Justin Slaughter, Twitter, February 11, 2024 https://x.com/JBSDC/status/1756795222338453935 (“The idea that Trump emerged & won because of working class anger at the economy has guided basically all Democratic policymaking since 2016. There was a theory that a strong economy would pull Obama Trump working class votes back. And it hasn’t worked”).

^[lxix] Kuttner, Robert. "Reclaiming U.S. Industry." The American Prospect, 24 Jan. 2023, prospect.org/economy/2023-01-24-biden-american-industrial-policy/.

^[lxx] See New Washington Consensus supra note 37 (focusing on growth in manufacturing, scaling and capacity building over innovation and new ideas).

^[lxxi] For an idea of what this entailed, “[a]gricultural collectives were established where agricultural land and inputs were jointly owned. Industrial enterprises were subject to central planning under a command economy. These allowed the government to decide not only which industries should be started or expanded, but also how much each should produce. Economic planning was coupled with social planning where governments established social safety nets and state sponsored health and education systems. Socialism in LDCs is not viewed as successful, with nearly all LDC socialist economies having been replaced. Many of them experienced great failures such as China’s Great Leap forward under Mao which resulted in 30 million deaths; other failures were less spectacular. More mundanely, socialist economies experiences chronic shortages of food and consumer goods and rarely offered any choices among products. Socialism was almost always linked with authoritarian governance.” Aside from causing considerable pain, these central planning models are hard to unwind.” https://study.sagepub.com/baker/student-resources/chapter-8-states-markets-and-development-models/chapter-summary (in-depth analysis of development models used by countries in shaping their economic policies. It classifies these models based on their support for market production and international trade. The summary discusses five key models: socialism, import substitution industrialization (ISI), export promotion, state capitalism, and the Washington consensus, highlighting the differences between state-led and market-oriented approaches). See Andy Baker, Shaping the Developing World: The West, the South, and the Natural World, https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/chinas-heavy-economic-legacy-of-state-ownership-and-central-planning/

^[lxxii] Technophobia: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment." Cleveland Clinic, 20 Apr. 2022, my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22853-technophobia.

^[lxxiii] Better Markets, Conference on Lehman and Too-Big-to-Fail, FIRESIDE CHAT: A Market Regulator’s View of Too-Big-To-Fail,YouTube, September 20, 2023,

^[lxxiv] Or how the push for ever more regulation and costs on every possible market actor might push against stated goals of advancing antitrust policy, fighting consolidation and too-big-to-fail. Warren, Elizabeth. "Senator Warren Speech: Antitrust and Open Markets." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Website, February 15, 2023, www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FINAL%20-%20Senator%20Warren%20Speech%20Antitrust%20Open%20Markets%202023.pdf.

^[lxxv] The goal has expanded from legislation to prevent risks to just slapping regulation on anything and everything in a futile attempt to prevent all the risks by regulating all the things. See, e.g., SEC's Rules on the Definition of a Dealer Will Help Protect Investors." Better Markets, February 6, 2024, bettermarkets.com, https://bettermarkets.org/newsroom/secs-rules-on-the-definition-of-a-dealer-will-help-protect-investors-from-the-risks-that-high-frequency-trading-firms-pose/

^[lxxvi] See EIA to initiate collection of data regarding electricity use by U.S. cryptocurrency miners, U.S. ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, January 31, 2024, https://www.eia.gov/pressroom/releases/press550.php. For a reaction to the proposed data collection, see The EIA Emergency Information Collection Is Alarming, Bitcoin Magazine, February 8, 2024, bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/the-eia-emergency-information-collection-is-alarming.

^[lxxvii] The Curious Tale of Elizabeth Warren and the Short Seller." Fortune, 31 Mar. 2023, fortune.com/crypto/2023/03/31/the-curious-tale-of-elizabeth-warren-and-the-short-seller/.

^[lxxviii]Warren, Elizabeth. "Letter to Silvergate Bank Regarding FTX." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Website, 5 Dec. 2022,www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.12.05%20Letter%20to%20Silvergate%20Bank%20re%20FTX.pdf; see also Warren, Elizabeth. "Follow-up Letter to Silvergate Bank re Crypto Exposure and FTX Impropriety." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Website, 30 Jan. 2023,www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023.01.30%20Follow-up%20Letter%20to%20Silvergate%20Bank%20re%20Crypto%20Exposure%20and%20FTX%20Impropriety1.pdf.

^[lxxix] See lone summary of the article at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/roblwiii_view-in-browser-activity-7040711239974420480-EkNu

^[lxxx] As Warren’s office simultaneously publicized, on December 8, 2022, Senators Warren and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) sent letters to three key banking regulators to raise concerns about the ties between the banking industry and crypto firms. See Warren, Elizabeth, and Tina Smith. "Warren, Smith Ask Key Regulators About Banking System's Exposure to Crypto Risks After FTX Crash." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Website, December 8, 2022, www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/warren-smith-ask-key-regulators-about-banking-systems-exposure-to-crypto-risks-after-ftx-crash.

^[lxxxi]Warren, Elizabeth. "Senator Warren in New York Times Op-Ed: Silicon Valley Bank Is Gone. Its Executives Must Be Held Accountable and Washington Must Act to Prevent the Next Crisis." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Website, March 13, 2023, www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-in-new-york-times-op-ed-silicon-valley-bank-is-gone-its-executives-must-be-held-accountable-and-washington-must-act-to-prevent-the-next-crisis.

^[lxxxii] One of many attacks on Powell over the last several years, see Elizabeth Warren: Jerome Powell 'Failed'." NBC News, March 19, 2023, www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-failed-fed-chair-rcna75635. See also, Elizabeth Warren: Jerome Powell's Decisions Could Cause a Recession." CNN, 28 Aug. 2022, edition.cnn.com/2022/08/28/politics/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-recession-cnntv/index.html.

^[lxxxiii] See Signature Bank's Crypto Execution." The Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com/articles/signature-banks-crypto-execution-c707bb48(“Barney Frank says regulators seized Signature Bank last weekend because they wanted to send a message to other banks not to do business with the crypto industry. The evidence increasingly suggests the former Congressman could be right New York’s Department of Financial Services took possession of Signature on Sunday after it experienced a run on deposits following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Other midsize banks also experienced large deposit outflows, and Mr. Frank, who served on Signature’s board, says the bank had enough liquidity on Sunday to ride out the run.”)

^[lxxxiv] As acknowledged by the FDIC report the core lines of business were “commercial real estate (CRE) and commercial and industrial (C&I) lending” before devolving into a hit piece about how the ‘strategy’ of banking clients in crypto “exposed” them to “liquidity, reputation and regulatory risk do to the uncertainty and volatility of the digital asset space.” pp. 13-16,FDIC Highlights Approaches to Promote the Stability of Cryptoasset Activities in Banking." FDIC Newsroom, April 18, 2023, www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2023/pr23033a.pdf. Meanwhile “New York regulators have pushed back on Frank’s assertion that crypto played a role in Signature’s failure. In an earlier statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Financial Services said the decision “had nothing to do with crypto” but was about “a crisis of confidence in the bank’s leadership.” Crypto Industry Clash With Washington." Politico, Mar. 26, 2023, www.politico.com/news/2023/03/26/crypto-industry-clash-with-washington-00088476.. Meanwhile, continuing the scapegoating of these crises, SVB’s collapse got blamed in part on Silicon Valley.

^[lxxxv] “Banking should not be an industry that attracts risk-takers, Warren said.” Elizabeth Warren Wants to Make Banking Boring Again." CNBC, 31 Mar. 2023, www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/elizabeth-warren-wants-to-make-banking-boring-again.html.

^[lxxxvi] The FDIC ousts digit asset clients from Signature as part of an acquisition under cover that the acquirer did not want them (as opposed to regulators putting pressure on banks not to bank us) and told to transfer. Signature's Crypto Clients Told to Close Their Accounts by April 5: Report." Cointelegraph, March 29, 2023, https://cointelegraph.com/news/signature-s-crypto-clients-told-to-close-their-accounts-by-april-5-report.

^[lxxxvii]Warren, Elizabeth. "Warren Expands Coalition of Banking Committee Support for Bill Cracking Down on Crypto's Use in Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking, Sanctions Evasion." Elizabeth Warren's Senate Website, December 11, 2023, www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-expands-coalition-of-banking-committee-support-for-bill-cracking-down-on-cryptos-use-in-money-laundering-drug-trafficking-sanctions-evasion.

^[lxxxviii] Anti-Crypto Bill Elizabeth Warren." Cointelegraph, December 20, 2023, https://cointelegraph.com/news/anti-crypto-bill-elizabeth-warren-american-bankers-association.

^[lxxxix] United States Congress. Digital Wallet Licensing Bill, July 25, 2023, https://docs.house.gov/meetings/BA/BA00/20230726/116291/BILLS-118-HR4763-F000454-Amdt-8.pdf. See New Anti-Crypto Movement Escalates Congress's Assault on Privacy" Forbes, August 2, 2023,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/08/02/new-anti-crypto-movement-escalates-congresss-assault-on-privacy/?sh=1ae84b322509(“According to Foster, this ‘licensing regime’ is necessary because crypto markets are rife with fraud. He claims between 50 percent and 70 percent of crypto transactions are fraudulent, and self-hosted wallets are ‘the lifeblood of the fentanyl distribution industry and human trafficking.’”)

^[xc] For more background on the Better Markets CEO, one of a number of obsequiously flattering profiles from the NYT describes Dennis Kelleher as a Harvard Law School alumnus and a former partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom that set aside a promising career to dedicate his life to the public interest. Another calls him David fighting goliath in the form of industry. Dennis Kelleher, "Ten to Watch in 2016," WealthManagement.com, https://www.wealthmanagement.com/people/ten-watch-2016-dennis-kelleher and see Brandeis University, "Alumni Profiles: Dennis Kelleher '78, P'12," https://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/2015/spring/class-notes/alumni-profiles/kelleher.html. All at an organization giving out purity tests that it cant meet as Better Markets was founded and bankrolled to the tune of $3M a year by Michael Masters, founder of Masters Capital Management a hedge fund and now chair of Better Markets where Kellehner draws a meager salary of over $400k a year to fight the good fight. Over time donors have expanded to such grassroots funders such as Rockefeller Family Fund. See ProPublica, Nonprofit Explorer, Better Markets Inc., https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/272227363.

Not so dissimilar to their longstanding ally who got rich from working at Goldman. For an idea of just how far this organization goes back with Gensler, see Kelleher Leads a Nonprofit, Better Markets, in Fight for Stricter Banking Rules," The New York Times (May 31, 2012),https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/business/kelleher-leads-a-nonprofit-better-markets-in-fight-for-stricter-banking-rules.html (quoting Gensler that “[i]t’s good to get some balance into the mix,” said Gary S. Gensler, the chairman of the commodities commission. “My mom and your mom don’t usually have somebody who’s going to spend the time reading the detailed rules, and do not necessarily have the same resources or desire to be into the minute details that the large financial interests on the other side of this debate do”).

^[xci] Crypto Miners and the Biden Administration Appear to Be on a Collision Course, Yahoo Finance, March 1, 2024 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-miners-biden-administration-appear-061620045.html. Before the withdrawal, Texas Blockchain Council & Riot Platforms, as litigants, had succeeded in getting a temporary restraining order to stop the government from proceeding with the information requests. A copy of the court order is available here:

https://twitter.com/BitcoinPierre/status/1761182948970086490

. See also, Twitter netizens connecting the dots between Warren and this effort, https://x.com/MorgensternNJ/status/1763667523268985285.

^[xcii]

https://coinmarketcap.com/

(accessed March 7, 2024 citing a market cap of $2.5 Trillion).

^[xciii] See, e.g. this argument that memecoins are a populist movement (similar to Wall St. Bets) where the sense of despair from the cost of living crisis has driven people to gambling and financial risk taking to make it. Memecoin Season and the Rise of Financial Nihilism. Brave New Coin, March 5, 2024, https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/memecoin-season-and-the-rise-of-financial-nihilism.

^[xciv] There are shared elements of ideology here from Dean Baker’s discussions of IP as government-granted (and enforced) monopolies aligning with the open source movement; from concerns within crypto about de facto centralization (see, e.g., this paper I wrote with Gabe Shapiro and Marc Goldich talking about exactly this https://members.delphidigital.io/reports/policy-paper-series-part-1-reframing-how-we-look-at-a-crypto-legislative-solution).

^[xcv] See infra note 99 and accompanying discussion.

^[xcvi] See discussion in supra note 94.

^[xcvii] Defined by our friends at urban dictionary as “a man with an computer science degree, low critical thinking skills, a large ego, and too much venture capital money” https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tech%20bro%27s. See underlying tweets and replies, available here

https://twitter.com/Econ_Marshall/status/1759238437805441425

and

https://twitter.com/Econ_Marshall/status/1759705683275157708.

^[xcviii]Elizabeth Warren, Senator Warren Keynote Speech at Open Markets Institute: Antitrust and Open Markets, February 15, 2023, https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FINAL%20-%20Senator%20Warren%20Speech%20Antitrust%20Open%20Markets%202023.pdf.

^[xcix] Including a continued deference to Warren’s personnel selections in late 2023 and a doubling down on what they have been doing as the key to their political success. See Justin Slaughter, Twitter, March 4, 2024, https://x.com/JBSDC/status/1764639713812435377 (in terms of “what the White House is actually thinking about the 2024 race….[t]hey don’t think they’ll lose this election and they aren’t making course corrections.”); Democrats' Economic Strategy Is Working. So Why Are They in Trouble?" Politico (February 16, 2024),https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/16/democrats-economy-inflation-column-00141816.(stating Ramamurti firmly believes that the Biden administration — and the larger progressive economic agenda — deserves considerable bragging rights- “The idea that, ‘Oh, Democrats instituted a set of policies that they always wanted that ended up producing an extraordinarily fast and highly equitable recovery, and that’s why people are unhappy’ — I don’t think that’s a good reading of the evidence.”).

^[c] Trump is ambivalent at best, recently stating "There has been a lot of use of that [bitcoin] and I'm not sure that i would want to take it away at this point.” See Donald Trump Sounds More Constructive on Bitcoin, CoinDesk, March 11, 2024,https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/11/donald-trump-sounds-more-constructive-on-bitcoin/.

^[ci] Federal Elections 2020, https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2020.pdf

^[cii] Though this sounds extreme, it was discussed as a possibility as Feinstein’s health declined. Mathews, Joe. "Should Dianne Feinstein Resign or Stay in Office? With AI, She Can Stay as Long as She Wants." San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 2023, https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/dinanne-feinstein-resign-difi-ai-18107088.php.

Key Drivers of U.S. Technophobia.

Policy Papers

Table of Contents

I. Double Checking the Separation of Powers Manual - Who is Empowered to Create Policy?

A. The Executive Branch: Personnel is Policy.

B. Executive Branch Landgrabs - Checks and Imbalances of Power.

II. The Substance: Where is the Executive Branch on Policy?

A. Drinking the Warrenite KoolAid.

B. Policy Creation: Expanding & Weaponizing the Regulatory State.

III. The Bigger Picture: Fighting Technophobia & Fear-Induced Policy Positioning.

A. Typologies Among Technophobes.

B. Know-Thy-Opponent.

IV. When Fear Bears Fruit: A Chronology of these Forces at Work.

A. Fighting on All Fronts: A Case Study in Bad Faith.

B. Learning Curves & Tech Incoherence.

V. Action Items - Where We Go From Here.

A. How Do We Best Approach Policy Work in this Environment?

B. More Broadly, Where Do We Go From Here on Economic Policy?

I. Double Checking the Separation of Powers Manual - Who is Empowered to Create Policy?

A. The Executive Branch: Personnel is Policy.

B. Executive Branch Landgrabs - Checks and Imbalances of Power.

II. The Substance: Where is the Executive Branch on Policy?

A. Drinking the Warrenite KoolAid.

B. Policy Creation: Expanding & Weaponizing the State.

III. The Bigger Picture: Fighting Technophobia & Fear-Induced Policy Positioning.

A. Typologies Among Technophobes.

B. Know-Thy-Opponent.

IV. When Fear Bears Fruit: A Chronology of these Forces at Work.

A. Fighting on All Fronts: A Case Study in Bad Faith.

B. Learning Curves & Tech Incoherence.

V. Action Items - Where We Go From Here.

A. How Do We Best Approach Policy Work in this Environment?

B. More Broadly, Where Do We Go From Here on Economic Policy?

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