Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Source: Konrad Putzier and Justin Lahart, “The AI Build-Out Is Becoming the Biggest Economic Bet in U.S. History,” Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2026. Commentary: The United States could pour an estimated $10.3 trillion into the infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence between 2025 and 2032, including the rapid expansion of data centers.

Four individual subscribers to Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini have sued Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google, alleging that the companies agreed to slow the development of their competing AI products. The plaintiffs do not challenge the companies’ individual decisions about safety, testing, environmental impacts, or the pace of their own development. Instead, they argue that competitors agreeing on common safety standards can unlawfully limit the pace of innovation.

| October 1, 2026 Last week’s Trump–Xi summit produced plans for tariff reductions on about $60 billion in bilateral trade. While that may provide relief for some American exporters and consumers, the reductions focus on goods produced by “nonstrategic industries,” including hair care products and toys. Meanwhile, the agreement left key “national power industries,” such as semiconductors and batteries, outside its scope.

At the frontier of AI, closed models currently outperform open models on the most demanding measures of raw model capability, even though open models can offer significant advantages in cost, efficiency, speed, and customizability.

On September 9, 2026, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) published a Proposed Amendment to the Merger Notification Guidelines to Address Blind Spots in New-Type Business Combinations (Proposed Amendment).[1] The KFTC placed the Proposed Amendment on administrative pre-announcement (Announcement) until September 30, after which time it will finalize and implement the Proposed Amendment after fully reviewing the opinions of interested parties.

WASHINGTON—In response to California Gov.

| September 30, 2026 The United States is a dominant global leader in the creative and entertainment industries. The sector contributes nearly $1.2 trillion to gross domestic product (GDP)—4.2 percent of the total U.S. economy—and U.S. creative services exports totaled $294 billion in 2024, the latest year for which data is available. The industry also supports 5.4 million American jobs.

WASHINGTON—Following the FCC's reform of its NEPA rules, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy, released the following statement from Ellis Scherer, policy analyst for broadband, spectrum, and space policy: The FCC just cut through red tape that’s been holding back America’s communications and space sectors, exempting a range of licensed activities from dubious and drawn-out reviews.

Event Host: Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) The Shilla Seoul249 Dongho-roJung District Seoul Daniel Castro President Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Speaker Daniel Castro speaks about the potential of improving science and technology policy through the use of AI and predictive analytics on the "Intelligence beyond Information, Signal beyond Noise: EWS Detecting Emerging Security" panel at the 2026 Intelligence Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, hosted by the...

The backlash against data centers is growing, driven by concerns about their environmental impact, effects on local communities, and demands on public infrastructure. But the backlash is also developing a partisan dimension. Recent polling shows that Democrats are substantially more likely than Republicans to oppose data centers and that support has fallen sharply over the past year, particularly among Democrats. Much of that shift reflects growing concerns about the resources data centers consume.