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You're listening to TechTank, a BI weekly podcast from the Brookings Institution exploring the most consequential technology issues of our time. From racial bias and algorithms to the future of work, Tektank takes big ideas and makes them accessible.
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Thanks for joining our Brookings Tech Tank podcast. I'm Darrell west, senior Fellow in the center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. Now that it is 2026, there are questions as to how technology policy will unfold and what actions governments will undertake. We are seeing dramatic advances in generative AI, but concern about how IT and other tech developments will be regulated and and what it means for questions such as fairness, privacy, and transparency. To discuss these issues, I am pleased to be joined by my colleague, Nicole Turner Lee. She is the director of the Brookings center for Technology Innovation and the author of a Brookings Press book entitled Digitally how the Internet is Creating the New Underclass. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it. And what Nicole and I are going to do today is to discuss what to expect in the coming year on the technology front and what people should watch from the Trump administration and Capitol Hill. Nicole, welcome to our Brookings Tech Tank podcast.
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Hey, Darrell, it's always great to be with you at the beginning of the year. So I feel like this is something we've been doing for quite some time.
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Yeah, it's always great to do a tech outlook and kind of compare notes and it's always good to be on with you as well. So. So let's just jump right in. And Nicole, I know there are lots of exciting developments on the AI front. President Trump has made news by issuing an executive order limiting the ability of states to regulate AI. We know there are court challenges to that order, but based on what we know now, what is your assessment of that executive order and how do you think it will affect the states?
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Well, this is an interesting question. I mean, I think the Trump administration in the second presidency has been really clear that AI is going to be the driver for our global competitiveness and just position us, you know, much better when we are compared to China and Russia and other areas. So I think, you know, that conversation and that narrative is one that has, I think, come out of the Biden Harris administration as well, and one in which I think is really important for the United States to lead. The same token, where are, where there are really interesting highlights in the executive order that allow for that type of global competitiveness in the area of AI through there's a lot of other areas that are Sort of restricting the ability of the US to do so. One being the conversation of, you know, preempting states as they begin to think about ways in which they can either regulate, legislate, or experiment with AI. And I think that's, you know, pretty much an. A stickler in the conversation right now. State rights are particularly important, not just on the consumer protection side. I consider states as sort of the. The protector of your grandmother's Internet. They are the ones that are working to ensure that the attorney General has the power that he or she needs so that we can avoid things like fraud, scam, and abuse. But states are also being put on the wire that if they do not comply with the very exciting and assertive demands of the White House, that they will be considered out of order and out of line. And in some instances, the executive order implies that they can lose federal funding, such as the ones that are being given to expand broadband infrastructure, simply because they're not necessarily working alongside the government. So I think, Daryl, for me, that's a stickler alongside, I think some of the other areas which are very confusing and concerning about the executive order in terms of, you know, the limitations and restrictions on higher education, the lack of interest in setting up guardrails to avoid predatory algorithmic decision making, among other things. So it's an interesting time, but I think the state stickler one is one that we can't seem to shake. It seems like preemption is on the mind of this White House in their absence of actually doing anything to protect consumers or to provide some certainty around AI legislation.
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No, I think those are all terrific points, and I do think it'll be interesting to watch the legal challenges. There are a number of states that already have started to regulate AI, California, New York, and other places. So they're clearly concerned. I mean, I'm personally worried about how Trump is trying to repeal federalism at a variety of different levels. We're seeing this not just on AI, but in terms of crime, law enforcement, the use of the National Guard in cities across the country, immigration, the use of federal grants, kind of pulling federal grants back from states that are not Trump states. But the one thing I did notice about the Trump executive order is even though he wanted to limit the ability of states to regulate AI, it was actually fairly narrowly crafted in the sense that it did create several exceptions. So, for example, there's a lot of contentiousness over data centers in states and localities. So states that have permitting rules where data centers have to comply with the local regulations in order to Move forward. That was exempted from this rule. There are a number of states, more conservative states, that have passed legislation regulating social media platforms that was exempted. There are land use requirements in a number of communities across the country. So there were some things that were actually taken aside. Trump realized he can't just prevent states from doing anything. So I think he did try and craft it a little more narrowly than a lot of people realize, just to avoid the legal challenges which he knew was going to pop up.
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Well, and if I could actually also add in, I think there's, you know, when we had this conversation maybe two or three months ago, when the executive order came out, I think that, again, this ambiguity that was sort of encased in how the White House was sort of putting down these restrictions, like you said, it allowed for some, you know, interpretation that could essentially, you know, cover them if they needed to be covered. But I was on LinkedIn, right, and I was reading a piece that is in Science magazine that just came out by my friend and your friend, Alondra Nelson. And I think she also put in another area that people have not quite talked about. And you just brought it up with, like, all of the things that are happening across the world, that in this White House effort to be the AI, you know, star, there's also an association with some of these global challenges that we've had, such as, you know, what's going on with Venezuela and Greenland. You know, critical minerals are a huge part of this, Daryl. And I'm curious to think what you also are thinking about this as well, that even in this AI plan of sort of accelerating our competitiveness against China, that some of these geopolitical concerns actually tie back to AI in many respects. Right. And people are not talking about them as much as they should. And I think that's what Alondra was trying to do in her article in Science magazine, which is absolutely brilliant, by the way. And something I've also heard about Greenland and where there's interest in Greenland has a lot to do with critical minerals. But this is beyond my pay grade. Daryl, I know you've looked at a little bit of this. I'm just curious to think, to see what you think about this as well.
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Now, certainly the critical minerals aspect is an important part of a number of things that Trump is doing. I mean, people have said that that is actually one of his interests in Greenland, that they actually do have some of the critical minerals who are needed for the whole digital revolution. The other comment that I would make on the executive order is the other thing I worry about is, you know, if you limit the state's ability to regulate AI for whatever time period, three years, five years or longer, it's going to be too late. Because that revolution is accelerating so rapidly. If we don't put any guardrails in place in the next three years, the world is going to be so completely different. Three years from now or five years from now, these AI tools are going to be embedded in everything we do and all the tools that we use online. It'll be too late. It'll be almost impossible to regulate at that point, which I think is what a lot of the tech companies would like. But as a consumer, I actually think that would not be a good approach to public policy.
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Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's something that we should probably look a little bit more into as well. You know, and I would just say the last thing, Darrell, that's really consuming this AI action plan that the Trump administration has put out are data centers. And just a plug for everybody who's listening. Darryl and I are data center deep. We have put out a paper that's an explainer. We have a new paper coming out shortly on what communities should be asking. But that has been, I think, another area which is very, very predominantly showing up right in the media cycle as one of the major concerns that is going to be required to be addressed if we are going to have the compute power again to outwit China on these issues.
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So, Nicole, AI is not the only topic likely to be important this year. We're also seeing several states and localities ban cell phones in schools. And I know that you are doing work on technology and education, so just want to ask you, are these bans a wise policy move, and why are states moving in this direction?
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Oh, Darrell, how can we do this? How can we go from AI to cell phones? Right? It's like, what's going on here? I mean, obviously, cell phones have just deeply been entrenched in our society. Um, we have an upwards of like 98 to 99% penetration of, you know, even the more modern smartphones versus a flip phone. Uh, we've seen this as a primary gateway for many people to the Internet as well. And then on top of these benefits of smartphones, we've also see the downsides which are connected to these conversations on whether or not young people have just, just way too much access when it comes to screen time. And this is not a new conversation, honestly. This is a conversation that has been well researched, discussed. There have been many efforts over the years to talk about better hygiene when it came to the use of technology, and especially technology in classrooms. Now we're seeing these national bands, which I find to be so interesting, where we want young people to sort of leave their cell phones at the door when it comes to. Which makes a lot of sense in some instances because the research is quite real in terms of distractions as well as, you know, the focus on the way in which attention is sort of implemented by students when they're learning something new. But I still stand on the side that it's really important for us to also assess that some of these technologies are a lifeline for students when it comes to being in unsafe home environments. Uh, it is a way for them to get the type of help they need or if they are in homes where safety is an issue. When I was doing the research for my book, I found that in a community In Maricopa County, Arizona, young people under the age of 10 had cell phones simply to be able to track whether or not a family member was deported while they were in school. Um, and in some instances, and this also buys, with my research, we've seen young people unable to buy a calculus computer and have had to rely upon their cell phone to be able to do their homework. I think Governor Phil Murphy actually had a really good way of talking about the cell phone ban. He's basically suggesting that we want to get screens out these screens out the classroom, but we want to do it on a case by case basis, giving more authority to the teachers to really think about ways in which it can be creatively used to by students or in areas where the students have critical need. For me, that sounds like a smarter solution and one that is less. I want to say this, and I might get a little heat on this, but bring it forward. I'm, I'm, I'm up for it. You know, I do think that much of the cell phone ban and the technology ban conversation are being driven by middle class families who have the ability to provide other choices to their kids. And I also think that, you know, much of the conversations around cell phone bans have a lot to do with this fear that young people will go on there and just do really bad things and listen. I just remember my dad telling me when his mom tried to ban his record player from his room because she was afraid he was going to listen to, you know, Marvin Gaye. To me, these are just the questions that commonly come up with technology, that instead of banning, perhaps we need more thoughtful responses, much more media Literacy and digital literacy education, AI literacy education as well, and just better ways to equip parents to be able to respond to these things in meaningful ways. Because I can tell you, Dara, I think there were some things that I were banned during my lifetime, and I still managed to use it and get access to it, you know, And I think that's really important with these cell phones that, you know, it's really done in a very thoughtful manner where we're not really penalizing the technology or perhaps our inability to do our job as a society when it comes to media literacy.
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I think you're right on that. Bans historically have not worked on hardly any new technology because people do find a way to use them. But I remember in your Digitally Invisible book, you also argued that in a number of underserved communities, both in rural areas as well as urban areas, that schools often were the lifeline and the vehicle by which people got access to the digital world because they didn't have access at home. And so they needed to have access during school time in order to do their homework, access electronic resources and so on. The other thing that I worry about, and I know that there's a lot of concern about the whole distraction issue in the classroom, which I think is a very real issue. I mean, I even talk to people at the college level, friends of mine who teach in colleges, they complain that college students are using their cell phones during class time as well and not really paying close attention to what is going on in that classroom. With teenagers in particular, there's a lot of concern about the role of cell phones and social media platforms in particular, on the mental health of those individuals. We all remember that's a very formative and vulnerable age for a lot of people, especially young girls. Body image problems and so on. Just the whole mental health problems that seem endemic in that generation. People talk about loneliness. People feel isolated. And so I do think that the cell phone issue is a reasonable one to raise. And we have to think about how to kind of balance getting the advantages of cell phones in terms of access with some of the problems that we definitely see.
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Yeah, and I agree with that. I'm working on a piece with Josie Stewart, which is sort of framed in Robert Putnam's distinguished piece Bowling Alone, where he sort of argued the same thing in terms of loneliness in society, coming from the sort of the erosion of collective cohesion because people didn't bowl in leagues anymore when television came out, and people found themselves doing things singular by themselves, without community at hand. And for me, that makes a lot of sense in terms of television and it makes a lot of sense in terms of new technology. But I also caution people, you know, the cell phone itself, when it was just the Internet, I don't think we saw as many of the challenges that we see today as more of these applications have sort of taken the obsession space on these phones. So I always tell people, don't all always blame the phone, blame the applications, and being sure that people understand that many of these applications are filling the void of loneliness, that bowling alone mantra that Robert Putman came. And they are due to the fact that in addition to the mental health concerns of young people, there's a backdrop of mental health reductions in funding or abandonment of Boys and Girls Club or, you know, the increasing cost of getting your kid into some type of extracurricular sports activity. And so I really think that it's a combination of us looking at a society, the extent to which we want young people to have access to the technology so they compete, compete in this new labor economy, while at the same time we're giving some guidance, maybe a public service campaign or we're ensuring that there's some type of course that's done as a requisite in the schools, but we're really making this part of our values and norms on how to use these things in meaningful ways. I mean, think about it. When a kid is trying to drive, probably every public school across the country requires a certain amount of hours in terms of driver's education. We've also historically required that when it comes to reproductive health, we're not doing it with cell phones or technology or generative AI. And I think that's something I'd like to see in my lifetime happen within our schools where we can start with some baseline learning.
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Yeah, we definitely need digital literacy training programs just to help people adapt to the new digital world. What the advantages, what the benefits are as well as the risk, and I think especially with young people, that would be very important. On another topic, there are powerful video editing tools that have emerged on various platforms, including grok, that alter images and have been used even to undress women. And many, of course, are completely outraged by this. So Nicole, I'm just curious, is the outrage that has emerged over this particular application enough to stimulate congressional action?
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Oh, I think so. I mean, I think we've had some bipartisan consent and I think this is going to be a 2026 issue around, you know, non consensual images being shared on the Internet and being able to use these types of AI tools to manipulate body as well as voice and, you know, opinion and all these other things. I mean, I think it's really important that Congress begin to see that their lack of action on this issue, when it was very fundamental, the, you know, linked to deep fakes, has now gotten out of control. We've essentially given tech companies loopholes for people to do just really big horrible things and disturbing things on the same platform that has the potential to be a problem solver. So, you know, there was news recently that GROK is actually being embedded into the Department of Defense. I can tell you that I had some nightmares about potential applications based on what the public is actually do utilizing that tool for. There's a lot, for example, of mandatory requirements that are being assigned assessed on women in the military. There's a lot of pushback on transgender people in the military. I can only imagine how GROK could be used as not only a tool to shame people based on these just disturbing requirements and pushbacks, but also could be used in many respects to surveil people, you know, and so I do think that, you know, one of the things that I'm trying to do in my research, and Darrell, you've done the same in your work with federal governments, is to really draw some fine lines between the commercial applications that are being used by government entities, including Signal, and the extent to which they have no regulatory safeguards at all in place to ensure that the public is protected as well as the information that the government is stewarding that that's protected as well by these commercial products that are just being, you know, procured and used without any type of assessment of its security value.
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Now this has become a tool for shaming prominent women. And there are just so many examples of, like any woman who has advanced to the top of the political world or the business world sometimes becomes object to this type of degrading application. So clearly we need more legislation in this area. I did note that recently the people who run GROK claim that their applications have to conform to state and or national laws. But of course, the problem is we don't have a national law that prohibits this type of activity. There are a few states that actually have passed legislation. I think Minnesota has, and I think there are a few other states have as well. But most states do not have legislation in this area, and we clearly don't have that legislation at the national level. So the company's defense that they're conforming to state or national laws doesn't make any sense given the fact they know we actually don't have much legislation to prohibit this kind of behavior. But internationally, we are seeing other countries actually step up. The uk, The European Union, has launched investigations into this particular area. So I do think companies need to be held accountable, accountable for this type of thing. There are lots of ways in which technology has created advantages for people, but there's so many clear risks and problems and outright disasters. You know, we need some rules that put guardrails in place in those particular areas.
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Yeah. And I mean, I think it is such a different time. Right. Because, Darrell, you remember when it came to the federal government using many of these commercial products, there was such greater scrutiny, not just on the regulation side of it, but also just in practice. And I just don't think that we're seeing the same type of scrutiny. And when we do see these mistakes, as we saw with the use of signal, for example, it sort of brushed off as something that was just, oh, I didn't know this was going to happen when, you know, there could be some really serious consequences. And like I said, I really do have some reservations about some of these more active social media tools being used by our government agencies, especially at a time where they're being used to weaponize individuals. I mean, come on. You know, I hate to go down this path, but look at what's happening with facial recognition technology as it's being used around immigration, deportation efforts. You know, now we are seeing in place like Minnesota, where somebody can have their photo taken and then that information could be read by third party applications to determine whether or not that person should be in the United States or not. I mean, that type of surveillance, I think in the last few years, many of us have really thought about ways to execute this in responsible and fair ways. And the government being the catalyst for some of that behavior that doesn't emphasize those values can be very disturbing, I think, and have a precedent that's set in the future that we may not be able to return from.
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B
Yeah, it is disturbing the way in which some of these facial recognition tools are being abused. I mean, you mentioned the case of using it to identify immigrants who may be subject to deportation. But it's also being used to identify protesters. I mean, ICE agents are out there with cameras. They're videotaping people who are protesting ICE policies. And the fear is that facial recognition is being used to identify those protesters and subjecting them to arrest or possible legal intimidation. So that's something that we're certainly paying attention to now. I know there's been interest in children's safety issues in regard to technology. Congress has actually come close to passing legislation in this area, but has not quite managed to push it over the finish line. Australia just banned social media usage for those under the age of 2016. Nicole, will this be the year something actually moves in the Congress area in the United States?
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Well, it's gonna be interesting. I mean, Australia, I just read this the other day. 5 million social media accounts of young people under the age of 16 were deactivated the day after the law went into effect. And we're like a month in and they continue to ban these accounts for young people. I think in ways that are not only, you know, surprising the tech companies that they were going to go through what they said, but also individual teens who are, I, I understand for reading an article waking up saying, where is my social media platform? I mean, I think, you know, again, in the absence of any type of thoughtful balance conversation on how this technology evolves, you know, I would say that we had plenty of time to address these issues. I still go back to when Mark Zuckerberg addressed a bunch of parents in Congress who sat in the audience just very upset about the impact of these technologies on their children. And I think about the fact that we've had, you know, time to really consider where social media makes sense for young people based on the various privacy bills that have been in limbo in Congress. With that being said, I think Australia is quickly finding out that these blanket bans do have disproportionate effects on teens in remote areas where perhaps using their social media was the only need of communication because perhaps they didn't have telephone service. They're finding that it's having effect on children with disabilities, people who were dealing with elements of mental health that were using these social media platforms to be in community. And again, that's the trade off that Australia has made. I mean, the challenge that we have in the United States when it comes to social media, they are still protected by section 2 30. I think that there's some appetite, but not a lot to do a rewrite of that. There are still no data privacy laws in place that could potentially really reel in some of the grievances that most people have about the type of content that young people see. And even in the advances in age verification, like, you know, one company's effort to have people use facial recognition, for example, to verify whether or not they are 16 and over, there are still concerns as to whether or not, you know, a potential pedophile can grab a young person's phone, grab a young person's face for that matter, and use that as an entryway to still do the stuff that he or she does. So I, I think until we have a conversation around what data privacy looks like in this country, we have very good legislation around the protection of tech companies when it comes to harm that is being done by young people as a causal relationship with the technology that they are interacting with. And potentially if we have more conversation on quelling and averting the use of data by third party actors, I think until we do those things, it doesn't matter what we do. As we said before, young people are still going to find ways to get on it and tech companies, unfortunately, going to find ways to go against, to find loopholes in the laws. And so I sit, I kind of sit there, right? I, I don't know what is going to be the next step of this conversation. In the absence of children privacy protections,
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B
we definitely need a data privacy law within the United States. I mean, both you and I have called for that. Our colleague Kim Carey has written extensively on this front as well. That would not solve all these problems, but it certainly would address some of the issues that we've raised in this podcast. Now, the other arena to watch may be at the local level and specifically in regard to Mayor Mandami of New York City. He was elected as a Democratic socialist, and it'll be interesting to watch how he handles this whole technology area and whether he puts some new guardrails in place for tech companies that operate within New York City, which is basically most of the tech companies New York City, it's kind of like the state of California in the sense that they're such a big player that all the tech companies are operating there. And what California has discovered is that when they pass privacy laws or AI regulation laws, it almost becomes a de facto national standard because companies don't want to devise different types of products for California as they do for other states. And so I'm interested in watching Mayor Mandame just to see how he uses the city of New York City as a testing ground for some of the, the ideas that are percolating. We should also note he is being advised by Lina Khan, who's the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Biden. She's been very active in calling for new guardrails on the tech sector. So I'm just curious, Nicole, what we might expect from New York City and how that might serve as an incubator of ideas for the national level.
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Well, you Know, I'll just say it like this. I think if any tech company was looking for a boogie man or woman, it's coming out of New York.
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B
Right?
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I mean, New York City along with New York State for that matter. What govern the governor has done as well when it comes to cracking down on data brokers and establishing more data integrity task force and thinking about AI content that's used in elections. I am certain that the new mayor is going to follow in her footsteps and follow on the legacy of what's already been done in New York when it comes to bans on facial recognition or bans on the use of FRT in particular by law enforcement, or the way that New York has banned cell phones, but they've also put some bands in place for chat GPT in New York City public schools. So I do think that they are going to be an interesting example to watch because they've managed over the years like California, State of New York, California. They managed to get some stuff done right. Even if it's at the state level. And I really think that the moratorium may be more targeted towards them as to anybody else as well as like Illinois. But I think, you know, Mayor Madame is really going to think carefully with his colleague Lena Khan around consumer protection really geared towards public interest applications. I mean, housing is a big issue for them. I could almost be certain that housing algorithms, tenant algorithms, anything that is being used as an algorithm to determine eligibility that does not comply with any new standard will be scrutinized. Um, and so if you just take every issue that this mayor has run on and you just apply technology, I think you better be prepared that there will be some type of legislative directive coming out of this of the city as well the state of New York. And I also think that there'll be some consumer backup as he's also put in place a variety of task force to pay attention to these segments within the various verticals and more broadly on the community.
- [32:12]
B
Yeah, the new mayor has already put together some task force and kind of advisors who are helping to move him in this direction. And I think you're right. I would expect there to be some action on calling for greater transparency from the tech sector, more disclosure about what is happening with a number of different applications. I actually just did an interview with a New York radio station and they were talking about the use of facial recognition in retail outlets and the need for disclosure of that so that when people walk into the store, they know that that software is being deployed. And we also need to kind of Pay attention to how the data retention part of that, like how long the images are retained in the store databases. I also think the whole issue of bias and the impact of technology and how it affects women, various members of ethnic groups and minority groups and other protected categories could be an area where New York City does some interesting things. And then, of course, the whole privacy area.
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A
Yes.
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B
In the absence of a national privacy bill. So we've already seen some states adopt stronger privacy protections, and I could see New York moving in that direction as well.
- [33:35]
A
Yeah. And I think, you know, I want to be clear, you know, being a New Yorker myself, I do think that New York will find ways to incubate entrepreneurs and small businesses to utilize AI in ways that allow them to flourish. So I do see, you know, embedded in the mayor's agenda is also an economic opportunity agenda, which Darrell, I'm over here scratching my head, thinking, hey, I think a blog may be coming out of this. You know, how New York City and under Mandani may actually sort of frame, I think some of the future regulatory heft that I think many people want to see on the consumer protection side as well as on the opportunity side. Hmm. Maybe I'll start drafting that, my friend, as a. As a post.
- [34:21]
B
That would be a great topic. I think there would be a lot of interest in that. So, Nicole, it has been great to be on the same podcast with you. I enjoyed our conversation and look forward to an exciting year coming up. And I want to thank everyone for joining TechTank. We hope that you've enjoyed this conversation. Don't forget to follow both our Tech Tank podcast as well as our Tech Tank blog. For more details on many of the issues that we have discussed today, you can find us@brookings.edu. so thank you very much for tuning in.
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A
Yeah, thank you. And always a pleasure to be with my co host. And it's going to be a great year. 2026. Lots and lots of issues to discuss. Thank you for listening to Tech Tank, a series of roundtable discussions and interviews with technology experts and policymakers. For more conversations like this, subscribe to the podcast and sign up to receive the Tech Tank newsletter for more research and analysis from the center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.