China's October decision to add five rare earth elements to its export control list confirmed what policymakers have long feared. China controls 60% of global critical mineral production and over 80% of refining capacity for materials that power everything from electric vehicles to fighter jets. AI data center buildouts have only spiked demand further. Add cobalt to the picture—70% of global reserves sit in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China owns roughly 70% of that production—and you have a supply chain built for peacetime that could collapse in a crisis. The alloys in today's F-35 engines depend on elements Beijing could cut off tomorrow.

Joseph Krause argues the problem runs deeper than mining. Materials companies today are 75 to 150 years old. Some aerospace alloys still in use were developed for the Ford Model T. Meanwhile, China has been publishing the lion's share of advanced alloy research and aggressively recruiting metallurgy professors from American universities. China already fields a hypersonic capability using a niobium-based alloy; the US is scrambling to catch up. Krause's company, Radical AI, is building AI-powered labs to compress what typically takes 10 to 20 years and over $100 million in materials discovery into something dramatically faster and cheaper. The goal is inverse design: start with the exact properties the military needs, then work backward to find materials that don't require Chinese-controlled supply chains.

The Trump administration has moved aggressively, taking a $400 million stake in MP Materials, putting $2 billion toward stockpiling strategic metals, and working to streamline permitting that currently takes seven to ten years for a single US mine. FAI’s Farrell Gregory notes there's no silver bullet across the 60 minerals on the USGS critical minerals list, which ranges from rare earths at $8 billion in global market value to copper at $250 billion. The administration has shifted from blanket tax credits to case-by-case deals, prioritizing materials where Chinese leverage is highest and American action can make the biggest difference.

Krause and Gregory join Evan to discuss the challenges facing the U.S. amid Chinese dominance in rare earth minerals and what policymakers can do to make the U.S. more resilient to supply chain shocks, including public-private partnerships and government funding.

The federal government spends over $100 billion on information technology (IT) every year. About 80 percent of that goes toward operating and maintaining systems, many of which are long outdated and obsolete. Some federal IT systems are more than 50 years old.

On day one of his presidency, Trump signed an EO that established the Department of Government Efficiency, which included a mandate to modernize “Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

While DOGE helped shine a spotlight on the issue, it isn’t new. The Government Accountability Office has long warned about the risks of poor federal software practices—taxpayer waste, inefficient government processes, harms to citizens who rely on services like veterans benefits, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Many presidents have tried to solve it, but despite some improvements here and there, the problem has persisted for lots of reasons. Government agencies often lack the expertise to understand their software products and needs. Agencies have also failed to properly audit and track their software purchases. The companies who sell software to the government often deliberately make it difficult for agencies to modernize, change vendors, or diversify their supply chains.

With a renewed focus on government efficiency, how can Congress and the Trump administration tackle the long-festering problem of outdated and vulnerable federal IT? What can agencies do on their own, and what requires an act of Congress? And how would the American people benefit from improving these systems?

Evan is joined by Dan Lips, Senior Fellow at FAI and Luke Hogg, Director of Tech Policy at FAI. For more, see Dan’s blog post and Evan’s op-ed.

The push for a federal standard on AI is back. With support from President Trump, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is looking to add an effective ban on state-level AI regulation to the end of year National Defense Authorization Act. Despite the White House’s backing and strong support from the tech industry, the effort is facing bipartisan pushback, including from Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Democrats in Congress.

The battle is shaping up to be a redux of the moratorium effort from the summer, when a ban on state AI rules came close, but failed to make it into the One Big Beautiful Bill. While that preemption effort didn’t come with any federal standards in its place, this time proponents of federal preemption are working to assure skeptics that this won’t just be a ban on state rules, but will establish some federal safeguards on AI safety and child protection.

Can Congress agree to create a national standard that goes beyond simply telling states what they can’t do? Have the politics changed much since July when the prior effort failed? Will proposed safeguards be enough to move skeptics and those concerned about AI’s societal impact?

Evan is joined by Dean Ball, senior fellow at FAI. Previously, he was Senior Policy Advisor for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the primary staff drafter of America’s AI Action Plan. He is the author of the Hyperdimensional Substack, where his work focuses on emerging technologies and the future of governance.