Join us for a Brown2026 lecture on how access to information in the digital age can affect civic participation.

We are presenting field data evaluating real-time broadband and cellular transfer rates across Rhode Island—a study that serves as a modern audit of our state’s “informational infrastructure.”

In the 18th century, the pulse of the American Revolution was maintained through the physical distribution of the printed word.

Today, reliable broadband has superseded the postal road, becoming a civic necessity as fundamental as electricity or running water. Just as the Committees of Correspondence once relied on reliable horse-bound routes to organize the colonies, modern Rhode Islanders rely on digital lanes to access community services, local news, and the inner workings of our democracy.  Historically, the withholding of information has served as a silent form of disenfranchisement.

Without equitable access to broadband, the modern constituent faces barriers reminiscent of pre-revolutionary information blackouts:

America's wealthiest, shittiest people are trying to hoover up the entirety of new and old media companies in a bid to pummel the plebs with propaganda. But what they want, and what they actually get, may not be the same thing.

A Duke study finds shifting when data centers use electricity could avoid billions in new power plant costs and limit natural gas expansion as AI demand grows.

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is forcing utilities to confront a question they have not faced in more than a decade: how to meet a surge in electricity demand.

Across the country, companies are racing to build data centers that train and run AI systems.

The deal comes complete with so much debt that it would almost certainly lead to mass job loss. That could prove to be an argument against the deal in court, too.

Is there really a need for BEAD when Starlink is likely adding 225,000 U.S. rural customers every 50 days on average?

As AI labs gorge themselves on compute, data center operators have headed north in search of cheap and plentiful energy.

On the bank of the river that runs through the Swedish town of Borlänge, construction is underway on a sprawling new data center. The site previously housed a paper mill. When the developer, EcoDataCenter, broke ground in September, its CEO Peter Michelson declared, “The facility once produced paper, the raw material of the newspaper information age. Now, Borlänge will produce the raw material for AI and the next information age.”

The Borlänge facility is one of more than 50 currently under construction or soon to be developed across the Nordics—the region made up of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland—as demand escalates for data centers suitable for training and running AI models. Nowhere else in Europe is data center capacity growing faster, according to research by consulting firm CBRE.

ROCKFORD, IL — Landfills initially helped bring data center developer Monarch Energy to town. The San Diego-based infrastructure developer was attracted to land south of the Chicago Rockford International Airport in part because of its proximity to two landfills: the Winnebago Landfill just south of Baxter

Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the US and Israeli governments had launched a “major combat operation” against Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning, disinformation about the attack and Tehran’s response flooded X.

WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack.

Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess:

ICE relies on the firm for deportation tech—and Palantir’s PAC pays it forward to Congress.

As the Trump administration continues to violently occupy Minnesota, the role of the defense tech firm Palantir—which continues to sell its data mining, automation, and surveillance technology to ICE—is coming under increasing scrutiny. A new tool, launched Thursday, follows the money making it happen.

Palantir Payroll, the product of an effort by the campaign Purge Palantir, compiles data from FEC filings to account for the two-way cash flow: from the government to Palantir via contracts, and from company executives to elected officials. 

The campaign’s Jacinta González, head of programs at the progressive communications shop MediaJustice, says the tool helps bring to light Palantir’s business model to “operate in the shadows” through lobbying and political donations.

The trustbuster on what she's learned — and still learning — about how to use the machinery of government to deliver for people.

We talked live this afternoon with Lina Khan, the veteran trustbuster, Columbia Law professor, and former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, about what she’s been doing as co-chair of Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, how the new mayor can deliver on his campaign promises, and whether (and what) other Democrats can learn from him. Khan talked to us about:

• How Mamdani found a way work with Donald Trump without leaving his principles at the door

• The considerable overlap between the Epstein circle and the influential critics of her tenure at the FTC, and why she believes that is

• Whether New York City should wrest back control over its finances from the state

• Whether Democrats need to ditch their donor class

• And what she is investigating next as she returns to academic life

I want to talk about this Warner Brothers hostile takeover, which now we know involves Jared Kushner, some foreign governments. Can you break this down for us, what it is and in your opinion about this?

We’ve seen an extraordinary amount of consolidation already happen in Hollywood. And this would just mean that people have fewer options, that writers and creators in Hollywood have fewer options in terms of where they can sell their ideas, where they can distribute their ideas. Prices would go up. There could be, you know, horrible ramifications for just the future of Hollywood generally.

And so there are a lot of major, major red flags from a law enforcement perspective. I mean, we have in this country still antitrust, anti monopoly laws that are supposed to stop this type of extreme consolidation and on their face, both of these deals look illegal. 

When the modern electric vehicle was still in its infancy, drivers worried that vehicles would need expensive battery replacements within a few years. But battery lifespans are exceeding expectations.

Shortly after the president's ban of artificial intelligence company Anthropic, rival OpenAI announced it had done a deal with the Defense Department to provide its technology for classified networks.

In parts of the Middle East and North Africa, a patchwork of sanctions, payment failures, and licensing gaps pushes people into piracy networks.

For most of the world, streaming services promise smooth access: click, pay, and watch. In parts of the Middle East and North Africa, however, the reality is far more complicated. While global platforms such as Netflix and Spotify have expanded their reach, access across the region remains uneven.

In countries such as Syria and Lebanon, sanctions, financial crises, and fragile banking systems make even basic digital payments difficult. For many young people in these regions, piracy, VPNs, Telegram channels, and shared drives are not seen as fringe systems operating outside the law, but as the default way of accessing culture.

The legislature in New Mexico approved a broadband affordability plan, which it labels as LITAP (Low-Income Telecommunications Assistance Program). This plan is intended as a direct replacement of the expired federal Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP). Like the ACP plan, the New Mexico plan would provide a $30 monthly subsidy to qualified households, with up to…

Arab princes, Western bankers, Silicon Valley AI guys, and Israeli hawks are all part of one blob. And they just started a war. Plus, the Ticketmaster trial starts...

Lots of monopoly news, as usual. The Ticketmaster antitrust trial starts tomorrow, supermarket competition is heating up a few years after the Kroger-Albertsons deal was blocked, and Hollywood’s wealthiest producers back the Paramount takeover of Warner.

But the big story is of course the war in the Middle East launched on Saturday morning. And while war often seems distinct from the question of political economy, in this case the two are intrinsically linked.

Let’s start with the contours of the conflict itself, which is the second attack on Iran since last June. In that first conflict, Israel killed many people in the regime, and weakened the country significantly. But it was a largely choreographed response, with Iran sending a barrage of rockets repelled by defenses across the Middle East, and then the whole thing ended with a cease fire. Oil prices didn’t much move, and neither did stocks.

This time, it could be different.