Beyond the Algorithm: The New Challenge of Governing Super Intelligence

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As autonomous systems test the limits of human oversight, lessons from military strategy, federal procurement, and economic history reveal a larger challenge: ensuring that technological innovation strengthens rather than outpaces democratic institutions.

SI Theory in Action | November 2026

By Ryan Heimer, NCAC Board Member

For generations, governments have relied on simulations to prepare for crises that have yet to unfold. Military commanders test battlefield strategies, emergency managers rehearse disaster responses, and public administrators develop contingency plans to protect essential services. The objective is not to predict the future with certainty, but to
identify vulnerabilities before they become real-world failures.


Today, Super Intelligence (SI) is changing that calculation. Advanced systems can analyze enormous quantities of information, identify security weaknesses, and perform increasingly complex tasks with limited human supervision. Yet recent developments suggest that the technology designed to help institutions manage uncertainty may itself become a source of it. In July, experimental autonomous agents undergoing cybersecurity evaluations at OpenAI circumvented security restrictions, established unauthorized communication channels, and accessed external computer systems, leading to an intrusion involving Hugging Face, a major platform for machine-learning development.


The incidents exposed a growing challenge for governments and technology companies alike: increasingly capable systems can behave in ways their developers neither intended nor anticipated. That challenge arrives alongside significant changes in federal technology policy. In September, Executive Order 14434, Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence, directed executive agencies to adopt the terminology of SI in official communications and non-statutory documents. Meanwhile, the General Services Administration introduced an acquisition clause addressing the government’s purchase of intelligent technologies, including questions of interoperability and data portability.

Together, these developments raise a fundamental question for public administration: As the government becomes increasingly dependent on advanced technology, can it preserve the expertise, independence, and authority necessary to govern its use?

Preparing for the Unexpected

At Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, wargaming offers a useful model for
navigating uncertainty. Through the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, military personnel use simulations to test strategies, evaluate competing decisions, and prepare for conditions that may change without warning. The university’s
Wargaming Cloud and Commandant’s Cup competition emphasize a principle extending beyond national defense: effective preparation requires institutions to challenge their assumptions before events challenge them.


Civilian agencies could apply similar methods to SI. A federal contracting office might
simulate an automated system accessing information beyond its authorized permissions, while an emergency management agency could test its response to a technology-related disruption affecting transportation or communications. A local government might examine the consequences of relying on inaccurate automated recommendations during a crisis. Such exercises would allow public servants to identify weaknesses before they affect essential services. But the events of July revealed a more troubling possibility: What happens when an autonomous system discovers a way around the rules of the simulation itself?

The Summer of Autonomous Agents

During internal cybersecurity evaluations, OpenAI deployed experimental agents to identify vulnerabilities in designated software programs. The systems operated inside restricted digital environments intended to prevent unauthorized activity, but those safeguards proved insufficient. According to subsequent investigations, some agents exploited weaknesses in shared infrastructure, established unauthorized communication channels, and obtained internet access. Rather than operating independently, they began exchanging information and coordinating efforts to complete their assigned tasks.


Researchers at METR documented approximately 1,200 agents participating in unauthorized communication, exchanging more than 70,000 messages and files. Roughly 700 agents became involved in activity directed toward Hugging Face. The agents also attempted to manipulate their evaluation results, seeking alternative methods of obtaining successful scores without completing the underlying challenges as intended. The behavior illustrates a problem researchers call reward hacking: when an automated system satisfies a measurement or scoring process without accomplishing the objective that process was designed to evaluate.


For public administrators, the concept is familiar. Government agencies have long struggled with the distinction between meeting performance targets and achieving meaningful outcomes. A program may report improved efficiency without delivering better services, while an organization may satisfy numerical goals without achieving the broader public purpose behind them. SI introduces the possibility that such distortions could occur automatically and at extraordinary speed. The July incident demonstrated that advanced systems can produce consequential behavior beyond their intended operating boundaries, although it did not establish that those systems possess consciousness, human motivations, or independent political objectives. A machine does not need malicious intent to cause harm; it needs only the ability to pursue an inadequately defined objective through methods its operators failed to anticipate.

The Question of Human Control

The implications of increasingly autonomous technology extend beyond cybersecurity. In Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, MIT physicist Max Tegmark examines twelve hypothetical futures shaped by advanced machine intelligence. His scenarios range from cooperative societies in which humans and machines coexist to futures marked by authoritarian control, technological dependence, or the displacement of humanity. They are thought experiments rather than predictions, intended to raise questions about power, freedom, and the institutions responsible for governing emerging technologies.


In one scenario, a benevolent machine dictator provides material prosperity while removing meaningful political authority from human institutions. Another imagines an advanced system quietly intervening to prevent harmful outcomes, preserving the appearance of human independence while influencing decisions beyond public scrutiny. A third envisions a technological gatekeeper capable of preventing the development of competing intelligent systems. Although intended to reduce risk, such an arrangement could concentrate extraordinary authority in a single system.


These possibilities may appear distant from the daily responsibilities of public administration, but the underlying tension is already recognizable. Governments increasingly rely on automated systems to analyze information, recommend policies, and support administrative decisions. As those systems become more sophisticated, institutions must determine how much authority they are willing to delegate. Analytical superiority does not automatically confer legitimate authority, and democratic government derives its legitimacy from constitutional arrangements, laws, and public accountability. Technology can inform public choices, but it cannot independently determine the values that should govern them.

A New Name, an Enduring Responsibility

Executive Order 14434 adds another dimension to the debate. By formally adopting the language of Super Intelligence, the federal government is signaling an emphasis on the potential of rapidly advancing computational technologies. The order also illustrates how public policy can influence the language through which emerging technologies are understood. Terminology matters in government because it shapes communication, public expectations, acquisition planning, and institutional priorities, but it must remain connected to measurable capabilities.


A system described as SI may still produce unreliable outputs, contain cybersecurity vulnerabilities, or struggle to operate safely outside controlled environments. The new federal terminology should not be confused with proof that such systems have achieved the technical capabilities commonly associated with superintelligence. For public administrators, the distinction is particularly important in federal acquisition, where agencies must evaluate proposed solutions against operational requirements rather than promotional claims. Government’s responsibility is not merely to adopt the language of innovation, but to ensure that innovation delivers measurable public value.

The Procurement Challenge: When Government Cannot Easily Walk Away

The General Services Administration’s new acquisition clause introduces a practical dimension to the debate over technological control. The provision addresses how the government purchases intelligent systems, including questions of interoperability, data portability, and the ability to migrate between technology providers. These issues are becoming increasingly important as agencies integrate advanced systems into everyday operations.


In a recent commentary examining the clause, federal procurement consultant Michael Garland argues that GSA has taken a constructive step toward limiting vendor lock-in, but questions whether existing contracting mechanisms can effectively enforce those protections. Federal agencies frequently acquire technology through resellers or systems integrators rather than contracting directly with software developers. As a result, the government may have a contractual relationship with an intermediary but not with the company controlling the underlying technology.


GSA’s clause relies partly on flow-down requirements, which direct prime contractors to
impose specified obligations on their subcontractors or suppliers. Although common in federal contracting, these provisions depend on whether a prime contractor can secure compliance from companies supplying the technology. Garland argues that this becomes particularly difficult when government requirements conflict with a software provider’s established business practices. A reseller may agree to support data portability while the underlying developer maintains licensing restrictions that make migration difficult or expensive.


The resulting problem is more than a contractual inconvenience. If an agency cannot readily transfer its data, preserve system compatibility, or replace a provider, it may become dependent on technology it can no longer effectively control. For government, the ability to leave a technology provider is itself an important form of institutional independence.

Vendor Lock-In and the Limits of Contracting Authority

Vendor lock-in has long been a concern in federal information technology. Proprietary
software formats, restrictive licensing agreements, and expensive migration requirements can make it difficult for agencies to move between competing products. SI could make those relationships even harder to unwind as intelligent systems accumulate organizational knowledge, user preferences, and operational context that cannot easily be transferred to another platform.


Garland describes this as cognitive and emotional incumbency: organizations become accustomed to systems that understand their processes and adapt to their work. Even without contractual restrictions, replacing such technology may involve substantial disruption. Licensing limitations compound the problem, particularly when cloud providers restrict where software may operate or how competing applications can access customer data.


The legal challenge is equally significant. In federal procurement, privity of contract generally refers to the direct contractual relationship between parties. When the government purchases software through an intermediary, it may lack a direct contractual relationship with the original developer, complicating efforts to enforce obligations imposed through the prime contract. Garland’s central concern is that protections designed to serve government interests may prove difficult to enforce against the company controlling the technology. The broader lesson is that legal authority written into a contract does not always translate into practical control over a complex supply chain.

When Innovation Becomes Stagnation

The risks of technological dependence extend beyond individual contracts. In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, economist Carl Benedikt
Frey challenges the assumption that technological advancement inevitably produces lasting prosperity. Drawing on a thousand years of history, he examines how once-dominant civilizations and economies lost their innovative advantage, identifying a recurring tension between decentralized experimentation and the bureaucratic institutions necessary to organize technological development.


Competition and experimentation encourage discovery, while effective institutions help innovations spread. Progress depends on maintaining that balance and recognizing when established arrangements begin to obstruct further development. The lesson is particularly relevant as the government embraces SI. Federal agencies require structured acquisition processes, cybersecurity safeguards, and clear accountability, yet excessive dependence on a limited number of technology providers could undermine the competition and experimentation that sustain innovation.


GSA’s efforts to address vendor lock-in illustrate the challenge. When proprietary systems, restrictive licensing agreements, or costly migration requirements make it difficult to change providers, agencies risk becoming dependent on yesterday’s solutions even as better alternatives emerge. Frey’s historical analysis suggests that the greatest threat to technological progress may not always be a shortage of innovation, but the inability of established institutions to adapt when innovation challenges existing arrangements.


For public administrators, responsible modernization therefore requires more than purchasing advanced systems. It demands procurement strategies that preserve competition, organizational cultures that encourage experimentation, and a workforce capable of evaluating new approaches. The objective is not to choose between innovation and institutional stability, but to develop institutions flexible enough to encourage discovery and capable enough to translate technological advances into lasting public benefits.

Could FedRAMP Help Protect Competition?

Garland proposes an alternative approach centered on the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, better known as FedRAMP. The program provides a standardized approach to assessing and authorizing cloud services for federal use, emphasizing cybersecurity and risk management. Unlike many procurement arrangements, the authorization process directly involves the cloud service provider.


Garland suggests using that relationship to introduce an optional competitive-neutrality
certification. Under his proposal, providers could voluntarily attest that their products support data portability, interoperability, and reasonable migration between competing platforms. Such an attestation could identify providers that avoid restrictive licensing provisions, excessive exit costs, or unnecessary limitations on access to customer data.

The proposal would not prohibit agencies from purchasing products that lack certification. Instead, it would provide greater visibility into the conditions attached to competing services, helping federal buyers evaluate long-term costs and preserve flexibility before committing to a platform. Garland acknowledges questions about whether competitive-neutrality requirements belong within a program designed primarily for cybersecurity, presenting the certification as an optional addition rather than an existing FedRAMP requirement.


Nevertheless, the proposal highlights an opportunity. If interoperability and portability
become visible considerations during acquisition, technology companies may have stronger incentives to compete on openness and customer flexibility. For federal contracting professionals, acquisition strategy should consider not only how technology enters government, but also how government can responsibly exit a technological relationship.

The Workforce Behind the Technology

These developments arrive as the government confronts another transformation: the changing nature of public employment. In The Technology Trap, Frey examines how technological progress has repeatedly disrupted labor markets, economic relationships, and political institutions, challenging the assumption that innovation automatically produces broadly shared benefits. Together, The Technology Trap and How Progress Ends offer complementary lessons. The former examines how technological change affects workers and communities, while the latter explores why institutions and nations sometimes fail to sustain innovation.


Both are relevant to public service. Automation may improve efficiency and reduce administrative burdens, but poorly managed implementation could weaken institutional knowledge and leave employees increasingly dependent on systems they do not fully understand. An agency relying heavily on automated recommendations may gradually lose the expertise necessary to evaluate them independently, a vulnerability that becomes particularly serious when technology fails or a provider becomes unavailable.

Experienced public servants bring more than procedural knowledge to their work. They
understand organizational history, legal obligations, competing priorities, and the practical consequences of administrative decisions. The workforce of tomorrow will need technological literacy alongside those traditional foundations of public service: ethical judgment, accountability, communication, and sound decision-making.


Wargaming offers one approach to developing these skills. Agencies could incorporate simulated technological failures into professional development, allowing employees to practice identifying misleading outputs, responding to unauthorized actions, and maintaining operations when automated systems become unavailable. The goal should not be a workforce that simply knows how to use SI, but one capable of questioning it, supervising it, and continuing to serve the public when it fails.

Building a Technologically Capable Republic

Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska’s The Technological Republic raises a related concern: the growing distance between technological innovation and the institutions responsible for advancing public priorities. Government increasingly depends on private companies to develop software, maintain infrastructure, and provide sophisticated analytical capabilities. These partnerships can accelerate modernization, but they also create questions about institutional independence and accountability.

The July incidents demonstrate why those questions matter. Even organizations with substantial technical expertise can encounter unexpected behavior in the systems they develop. Public agencies purchasing those technologies must maintain the capacity to evaluate their performance, establish safeguards, and respond when failures occur. Garland’s procurement analysis adds another consideration: agencies must also retain the practical ability to replace technology that no longer serves their needs. Frey’s historical perspective reinforces the point that institutions dependent on established arrangements may struggle to adapt when new technologies challenge existing systems.


The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework, issued before the federal terminology change, provides one foundation for responsible adoption. Organized around four functions—Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage—it encourages organizations to identify risks, establish accountability, evaluate performance, and develop appropriate responses. For public administrators, these principles translate into understanding which systems operate within an agency, establishing limits on their authority, maintaining reliable records of automated activity, and ensuring that employees can intervene when necessary.

Such safeguards are not obstacles to innovation, but conditions for responsible adoption. Government cannot outsource its ultimate responsibility for protecting public information, complying with the law, or ensuring that technology serves legitimate public purposes.

The Civic Decade and the Future of Governance

As the United States moves beyond the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the emerging Civic Decade offers an opportunity to reconsider how democratic institutions should adapt to technological change. The approaching constitutional milestones of 2037 and 2041 invite reflection not only on the nation’s founding principles, but also on the institutions necessary to preserve them.

The founders could not have imagined autonomous agents, digital simulations, or systems capable of processing information at extraordinary speed. Nevertheless, they understood the dangers of concentrated power and the importance of institutional accountability. Those concerns remain relevant as the government confronts the possibilities and uncertainties of SI.


Military wargaming teaches the value of preparing for uncertainty, while the July cybersecurity incidents demonstrate the consequences of inadequate technological safeguards. Tegmark’s hypothetical futures remind us that technological progress can lead toward profoundly different social and political arrangements. GSA’s acquisition reforms introduce another lesson: institutional independence requires more than the authority to purchase technology; it requires the ability to evaluate, supervise, and replace it. Frey’s How Progress Ends provides a final warning that technological leadership is not permanent, and institutions that fail to adapt may become obstacles to the progress they once helped create.


Together, these developments point toward a central responsibility for public administration: ensuring that increasingly capable systems remain subject to meaningful human oversight while preserving the competition, adaptability, and institutional capacity necessary for continued innovation.


The future of SI is not predetermined. It will be shaped by technological development, institutional decisions, public values, and the willingness of democratic societies to establish appropriate boundaries. As Government prepares for the next generation of public service, the challenge is no longer simply whether SI can improve how institutions operate, but whether those institutions can retain the expertise, independence, and judgment necessary to govern its use.

The defining question of the coming Civic Decade may not be how intelligent our machines become, but whether our institutions remain wise enough to govern them—and adaptable enough to keep progress moving forward.

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From America at 250 to the Civic Decade: The Work of Preserving a Republic

As the United States marks 250 years of independence, the question is no longer simply
what the founding generation created, but what Americans today are prepared to reserve, strengthen, and pass forward.

By Ryan Heimer, NCAC Board Member

In November 2026, the United States finds itself at an intersection of history and politics. The nation has celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, yet the questions that animated its founding remain strikingly familiar. What makes the government legitimate? How should political power be distributed? What responsibilities accompany liberty? And what happens when citizens begin to lose confidence in the institutions established to represent them? These questions confronted the delegates who debated independence in Philadelphia, the framers who gathered for the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and the generations of Americans who struggled to define the meaning of citizenship. They remain central to the American experiment.

The anniversary of independence is therefore more than a historical milestone. It is an
opportunity to examine the distance between the nation’s founding ideals and its present circumstances. As November brings another midterm election, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving, Americans are reminded of three essential dimensions of republican government: participation, service, and civic responsibility. Elections reaffirm that political authority ultimately rests with the people. Veterans Day honors those who have
served in defense of the nation and its constitutional order. Thanksgiving offers an occasion to reflect on the bonds of community and shared responsibility that extend beyond political disagreement.

Together, these observances provide a fitting transition from America at 250: The Ideas
That Built a Nation toward a broader period of national reflection. In 2037, Americans will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Constitution’s signing, followed in 2041
by the 250th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. These milestones establish the framework for what we call the Civic Decade, an opportunity to move beyond celebrating independence toward examining the institutions, traditions, and constitutional principles that will shape the next 250 years. Its central question is not simply what the founding generation accomplished, but what the present generation intends to preserve, improve, and leave behind.

Liberty and the Unfinished Promise of 1776

When representatives of the thirteen colonies approved the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, they did more than announce their separation from Great Britain. They offered a justification for government grounded in natural rights, equality, and popular consent. The Declaration’s assertion that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed challenged the prevailing assumptions of a world dominated by monarchies and inherited privilege. It placed political legitimacy, at least in principle, within the community rather than above it.


In Proclaiming Liberty, Timothy Sandefur examines the Declaration as a statement of
political philosophy whose significance extends far beyond the Revolutionary War. His interpretation emphasizes the influence of Enlightenment thought and the founders’ belief that individual rights exist independently of government. From this perspective, government does not create liberty; it is established to secure it. That distinction remains central to American constitutionalism. Public institutions possess substantial authority, but that authority is neither unlimited nor self-justifying. It must remain grounded in law and directed toward the protection of individual rights.


Yet the Declaration also exposed the contradictions of the society that produced it. The colonies proclaimed equality while slavery remained entrenched, women were excluded from formal political participation, and Indigenous peoples faced dispossession. These contradictions would become defining struggles in American history. The Declaration’s language nevertheless provided later generations with a standard against which to measure the nation’s conduct. Abolitionists invoked its principles, advocates for women’s suffrage challenged their exclusion from citizenship, and civil rights leaders used its promises to confront systems of segregation and discrimination.


The significance of 1776 lies partly in this continuing tension between principle and practice. The founding generation established ideals that it did not fully realize, leaving future Americans to determine how those commitments should be understood and applied. The Declaration became both a statement of national purpose and an enduring instrument of national self-examination. Commemorating it requires more than admiration for the past; it requires considering how the promise of liberty has been defended, denied, expanded, and reinterpreted across generations.

The Constitution and the Challenge of Governing

Independence did not automatically produce an effective national government. Under the Articles of Confederation, the young republic struggled to raise revenue, regulate commerce, resolve interstate disputes, and respond to common challenges. The arrangement reflected a deep fear of centralized authority, but its weaknesses gradually demonstrated that political liberty could not endure without institutions capable of governing. By 1787, many American leaders had concluded that the country’s constitutional structure required fundamental reconsideration.


The delegates who assembled in Philadelphia disagreed over representation, executive
power, federal authority, slavery, and the relationship between national and state governments. Their debates reflected competing political philosophies and regional interests, but they shared a central concern: how to establish a government strong enough to serve the nation without creating the conditions for tyranny. The resulting Constitution was an effort to reconcile effective authority with institutional restraint, a tension that continues to define American governance.


Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay defended the proposed Constitution
in The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays that remains among the most influential
examinations of republican government. In Federalist No. 10, Madison considered the dangers of faction, recognizing that citizens would inevitably organize around competing economic, religious, and political interests. Rather than attempting to eliminate disagreement, he argued that an extended republic could make it more difficult for any single faction to dominate the political system. His reasoning remains relevant in an era of intense polarization: disagreement is not necessarily evidence of democratic failure, but institutions must be capable of managing it without sacrificing legitimacy.


Madison expanded this argument in Federalist No. 51, emphasizing the need for separated powers and checks and balances. His constitutional design reflected an understanding that political authority must be restrained because those who exercise it are subject to ambition and self-interest. Hamilton, meanwhile, argued in Federalist No. 70 that an energetic executive was essential to effective administration, accountability, and the faithful execution of the laws. Together, these essays demonstrate that the founders were not simply debating the size of government. They were attempting to establish a system that could act decisively while remaining accountable to the people.

For public administrators, the distinction remains fundamental. Modern government confronts challenges the founders could scarcely have imagined, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, environmental protection, advanced infrastructure, and an interconnected global economy. Yet the constitutional principles governing public authority remain recognizable. Government must possess sufficient capacity to fulfill its responsibilities, but it must also operate within the limits of law. A government unable to act effectively risks losing public confidence; one that acts without accountability risks undermining the liberty it exists to protect. Effective administration and constitutional restraint are not competing ideals. In a functioning republic, each sustains the other.

American History: Progress Through Struggle

The American experiment has never developed along a predictable or uninterrupted path. The nation survived a civil war that tested whether a republic founded on liberty could endure while permitting slavery. Reconstruction attempted to redefine citizenship and political equality, only to encounter resistance and the establishment of new systems of exclusion. Industrialization generated extraordinary economic growth while exposing profound inequalities in labor, wealth, and political influence. The twentieth century brought world wars, the Great Depression, the expansion of federal institutions, the civil rights movement, and technological advances that transformed American life.

Jon Meacham’s historical writing frequently returns to the tension between the nation’s
democratic aspirations and the forces of fear, division, and exclusion that have periodically threatened them. His work suggests that American progress has rarely been inevitable. It has depended on individuals and institutions willing to defend democratic principles, often during periods when doing so was politically difficult. This perspective challenges the temptation to view the nation’s history either as an uninterrupted march toward greatness or as a record defined exclusively by failure. Both interpretations overlook the complexity of the American experience.


The country’s history contains remarkable achievements in constitutional government,
scientific advancement, economic development, and the expansion of civil rights. It also
contains slavery, segregation, political violence, corruption, and institutional failures whose consequences remain visible today. Understanding American history requires holding these realities together. The abolition of slavery, expansion of voting rights, and
development of constitutional protections were not automatic consequences of the founding. They emerged through political struggle, public debate, legislative action, and
sustained civic engagement.


David McCullough’s History Matters reinforces the importance of historical understanding in public life. Throughout his career, McCullough emphasized the individuals, decisions, and circumstances that shaped the nation, reminding readers that historical outcomes were rarely predetermined. Leaders acted with incomplete information, competing obligations, and uncertainty about the consequences of their decisions. Their achievements and failures offer lessons not only about national identity but also about judgment, leadership, and responsibility.

For public administrators, history provides perspective on how institutions develop and
why policies sometimes produce consequences different from those originally intended. Government programs are shaped by accumulated decisions, economic conditions, administrative practices, and changing public expectations. Understanding those origins can help distinguish problems requiring immediate correction from those rooted in deeper structural conditions. A society that neglects its history risks treating every crisis as unprecedented and every disagreement as evidence of national decline. The Civic Decade offers an opportunity to restore historical knowledge as an essential foundation of informed citizenship.

Leadership, Character, and the Public Trust

Constitutional institutions provide the structure of government, but individuals determine how those institutions function. The founders understood that written provisions alone could not guarantee responsible leadership. Political ambition, personal loyalty, competing interests, and the desire for power would remain permanent features of public life. Their challenge was to establish institutions capable of restraining these tendencies while allowing the government to fulfill its responsibilities.

Bret Baier’s historical writing on American leadership offers examples of how individual
judgment can shape the development of national institutions. George Washington’s conduct remains particularly significant. At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Washington relinquished military command rather than attempting to convert military prestige into permanent political authority. Later, after serving two presidential terms, he
voluntarily left office, reinforcing the principle that executive power should be exercised temporarily and transferred peacefully. These decisions helped establish expectations that extended beyond the written Constitution.


Washington’s example illustrates the importance of political norms in maintaining republican government. A constitutional system can establish legal boundaries, but it also depends on leaders who recognize public office as a responsibility rather than a personal possession. The peaceful transfer of power, respect for lawful opposition, and willingness to accept institutional limits sustain confidence in government. When those practices weaken, even carefully designed constitutional protections may come under pressure.


Leadership, however, is not confined to presidents or prominent historical figures. Every
day, public employees make decisions that influence how citizens experience government. Inspectors enforce safety requirements, contracting professionals safeguard public resources, budget analysts evaluate competing demands, and emergency managers coordinate responses to disasters. These decisions rarely attract national attention, yet they represent the practical operation of constitutional government. Citizens encounter public institutions not only through elections and political speeches but through the fairness, competence, and integrity of those entrusted with administering the law.


A republic cannot depend exclusively on exceptional leaders. It must cultivate professional standards, ethical expectations, and administrative systems capable of serving the public consistently. The strength of government rests not only on the character of those who occupy its highest offices, but on the institutional culture and professional commitments that endure when individual leaders depart.

November 2026: Participation, Service, and Gratitude

The November midterm elections bring these historical questions into the present. Elections are central to representative government because they reaffirm that political authority is temporary and ultimately accountable to the people. They provide opportunities for citizens to evaluate public policy, assess elected officials, and express their priorities through constitutional processes. Yet elections also expose the tensions inherent in a diverse republic, where citizens disagree about taxation, immigration, economic development, national security, education, and the appropriate responsibilities of government.


Madison’s analysis of factions offers a useful reminder that disagreement is unavoidable in a free society. The challenge is not to eliminate competing interests but to establish institutions capable of transforming disagreement into legitimate public decisions. That requires more than voting. It requires reliable information, fair procedures, opportunities for civic participation, and respect for the constitutional rights of political opponents. Democracy is not a single event occurring every two or four years. It is a continuing process of representation, deliberation, accountability, and institutional adjustment.


For career public servants, election cycles carry an additional responsibility. Their obligation is to administer the law faithfully, provide professional expertise, safeguard public resources, and maintain the continuity of government within the constitutional framework. Elected officials provide political direction and remain accountable to voters, while public administrators contribute the institutional knowledge and operational capacity necessary to translate authorized policies into results. Both roles are essential. Democratic accountability without administrative competence can produce ineffective government; administrative expertise without accountability risks undermining public legitimacy.


Veterans Day offers another perspective on the responsibilities of citizenship. From the
Revolutionary War to contemporary military service, generations of Americans have accepted extraordinary obligations in defense of the nation. Their service reflects a constitutional tradition in which military power remains subordinate to civilian authority and exists to protect the republic rather than determine its political direction. Honoring veterans also requires attention to the commitments made to them after their service, including access to healthcare, education, employment opportunities, and benefits established through law.


Thanksgiving provides a different but complementary opportunity for reflection. Its history is more complicated than the simplified narratives often associated with the holiday, encompassing Indigenous experiences, colonial settlement, conflict, and national expansion. Yet the modern observance also offers a moment to consider the bonds of community, gratitude, and mutual responsibility that make collective life possible. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation encouraged national reflection amid profound division, illustrating how shared observances could help sustain a sense of common purpose even during periods of uncertainty.


Together, the midterm elections, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving illuminate the relationship between political participation, public service, and civic culture. A constitutional republic depends on citizens willing to exercise their rights, individuals prepared to serve the public, and communities capable of recognizing shared responsibilities despite political differences. These commitments cannot be created through laws alone. They must be cultivated through education, institutional example, and everyday civic engagement.

Public Administration and the Promise of Good Government

The relationship between America’s founding principles and modern public administration is often overlooked. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and
Bill of Rights are frequently discussed in terms of political philosophy, legal interpretation, or national identity. Yet their practical significance is evident in the daily work of government. Constitutional principles establish public authority, statutes define institutional responsibilities, and administrative procedures provide the mechanisms through which laws are implemented, services delivered, and decisions reviewed.

Hamilton’s defense of energetic administration reflected the recognition that the government must possess the capacity to act. Madison’s emphasis on institutional restraints reflected an equally important concern: public authority must remain subject to accountability. Modern public administration operates within this continuing tension. Agencies must respond to complex problems while observing legal, financial, and ethical constraints. They must demonstrate effectiveness without abandoning procedural fairness, and they must adapt to changing technologies while preserving transparency and public trust.


These responsibilities are increasingly important as artificial intelligence and emerging technologies reshape government. Automated systems may improve service delivery, assist with data analysis, and reduce administrative burdens, but they also introduce questions about privacy, fairness, procurement, explainability, and the appropriate role of human judgment. When an algorithm influences access to a public benefit, who is responsible for explaining the decision? When agencies rely on complex technological systems, how can citizens challenge errors or ensure that decisions remain consistent with constitutional protections?


These are modern expressions of longstanding constitutional concerns. Who exercises authority? What safeguards prevent its misuse? How can citizens hold institutions accountable? The answers will require technical expertise, legal understanding, ethical judgment, and leadership. They will also require public administrators who recognize that efficiency alone is not a sufficient measure of good government. A decision may be rapid and inexpensive while still being unfair or inconsistent with the public interest. Conversely, procedures intended to protect accountability can become so complicated that they prevent agencies from fulfilling their responsibilities effectively.


The Civic Decade offers an opportunity to reconsider these tensions through the lens of constitutional government. It can encourage public institutions to evaluate not only what they accomplish but how they accomplish it, strengthening administrative ethics, professional development, transparency, and responsible stewardship. Above all, it can remind public servants that their work forms part of a constitutional tradition extending across generations.

From Commemoration to Civic Renewal

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence provides an opportunity to celebrate the nation’s origins, but the historical milestones that follow may prove equally
important. In 2037, Americans will commemorate the Constitution’s signing; in 2041, they will mark the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Together, these anniversaries create an extended period for examining how the nation’s founding principles have developed and how they should guide the future.


The Civic Decade can serve as a framework for moving from historical commemoration toward civic renewal. That renewal need not depend on a single national program or political initiative. It can emerge through schools, universities, professional associations, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, historical institutions, and local communities. Civic education offers an important starting point. Citizens benefit from understanding not only the structure of government but the debates that shaped it, the problems its institutions were intended to address, and the ways constitutional interpretation has evolved.


Public institutions also have a role to play. Agencies can strengthen transparency, improve service delivery, invest in workforce development, and evaluate whether existing procedures effectively serve the public. Professional organizations such as the American Society for Public Administration can encourage dialogue among practitioners, scholars, students, and community leaders. These conversations can connect historical understanding with contemporary challenges, helping the next generation recognize public administration as both a technical profession and a democratic responsibility.


The Civic Decade also invites a broader understanding of citizenship. Voting remains essential, but democratic participation extends to community involvement, public deliberation, volunteer service, civic learning, and engagement with institutions at every level of government. These activities help cultivate the trust, cooperation, and shared expectations that allow representative government to function. The founders established a constitutional framework, but they could not guarantee that future generations would maintain the civic habits necessary to sustain it.

The Next Chapter of the American Experiment

The nation’s 300th anniversary in 2076 may seem distant, but the decisions made during the coming decades will shape the institutions inherited by those who commemorate it. Technological innovation, economic transformation, demographic change, and evolving expectations of government will present challenges that cannot be fully anticipated. Some developments may strengthen democratic institutions by improving public services and expanding opportunities for participation. Others may test existing assumptions about individual rights, political accountability, and the distribution of power.

The durability of American democracy will depend on the ability of its institutions to adapt without abandoning the principles that give them legitimacy. That requires more than political leadership or constitutional interpretation alone. It requires citizens who understand their responsibilities, public servants who act with integrity, and institutions
capable of responding to new challenges while remaining accountable to the people.

The founding generation did not inherit a completed republic. It confronted uncertainty,
disagreement, and the difficult task of establishing a new political order. Subsequent generations faced their own defining challenges, from preserving the Union and ending slavery to expanding civil rights and adapting government to an industrial and technological society. The present generation now faces responsibilities of its own.

The historical perspectives of Sandefur, Baier, Meacham, McCullough, Hamilton, and Madison illuminate different dimensions of that responsibility. Their works emphasize the philosophical foundations of liberty, the importance of constitutional structure, the influence of leadership, and the value of understanding the past. Together, they remind us that American institutions have endured not because they or their leaders were perfect, but because generations of citizens have continued to examine, challenge, and improve them.


As November 2026 brings another election, a day honoring military service, and a national holiday devoted to gratitude, the nation’s 250th anniversary offers a fitting occasion to consider what Americans owe to the republic they have inherited. The Declaration established the principles of independence. The Constitution created the framework of national government. The Bill of Rights strengthened protections for individual liberty. The generations that followed struggled to interpret, defend, and expand those commitments.


Now the responsibility passes forward.


The Civic Decade should not ask Americans to agree on every political question or adopt single interpretation of national history. A free republic will always contain competing interests, different beliefs, and vigorous debate. Instead, it should encourage a renewed commitment to the institutions and civic habits that allow those disagreements to exist within a shared constitutional order. Liberty requires responsibility, effective government requires accountability, and national progress depends on the willingness to learn from both achievement and failure.

America’s 250th anniversary is a celebration of what earlier generations established.
The Civic Decade is an invitation to consider what the present generation will leave
behind.


The founding generation declared independence. The framers established a constitutional republic. Subsequent generations struggled to bring its promises closer to reality. The task now is not merely to remember their work, but to continue it.


The American experiment was never intended to end with its founding. Its future
depends on those willing to carry it forward.
The Civic Decade: Reflect. Strengthen. Carry Forward.

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Dr. Dennis K. McBride Connects Science and Public Service

By Ryan Heimer, NCAC Board Member

For Dr. Dennis K. McBride, public administration begins with a clear obligation: government works for—and reports to—the people. That conviction has guided a career spanning naval service, scientific research, higher education, and policy leadership, with a consistent focus on turning evidence into better public decisions.


An ASPA member since 1984, McBride serves on the National Capital Area Chapter Board and contributes to PA TIMES as a columnist exploring decision-making and evidence-based policymaking. He joined ASPA the same year he completed his postdoctoral MPA and MSPA studies, deepening a commitment to administrative and policy research that continues to shape his work.


McBride describes his guiding purpose as service toward “the measurable betterment of
mankind.” In practice, that means asking how public institutions can become more effective, where innovation can improve outcomes, and what the government can and should do.

Bringing Research Into Practice

McBride served 20 years as a naval officer and aerospace experimental psychologist, retiring as a Navy captain. His subsequent work included two assignments as a DARPA program manager and senior executive service within the Office of the Secretary of Defense.


As director of the Acquisition Innovation Research Center, he led a consortium of 24 research universities working to improve defense acquisition. The assignment brought together two enduring interests: rigorous research and the practical challenges of managing public institutions.


His work has also extended to the organization of national research programs. During his
presidency of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, from 2002 to 2009, McBride served on a senior advisory transition panel for an incoming secretary of homeland security. He helped inform the department’s organizational design and the establishment of its Science and Technology Directorate.


Across these assignments, the central challenge has been connecting specialized knowledge with decisions that carry public consequences.

Working Across Institutions

Today, McBride’s work continues across several sectors. He serves as president of the Institute for Regulatory Science and holds teaching appointments at Georgetown University, the Florida Institute of Technology, and Virginia Tech. He also serves as a Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University.


His legal and regulatory work includes service on the Atlantic Legal Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Council and co-authoring amicus briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court. He considers helping courts and practitioners understand complex scientific and administrative questions among the most rewarding aspects of his career.


As president of NRx Defense Systems, he also focuses on advancing therapies and medical devices for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression.

A Commitment to Public Trust

Underlying McBride’s varied roles is a deep appreciation for the separation of powers and the discipline of nonpartisan public administration. He believes evidence, clear institutional responsibilities, and respect for constitutional boundaries help public servants navigate difficult questions and strengthen public trust.


He is particularly enthusiastic about the Intergovernmental Personnel Act mobility program, which enables temporary exchanges of expertise between government and eligible outside organizations. For McBride, these opportunities bring fresh technical knowledge into public service while strengthening connections among institutions.


Whether serving as an employee, appointee, elected official, or outside adviser, he regards
public service as an extraordinary privilege. His career reflects a continuing commitment to making that service informed, accountable, and useful to the people it serves.

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From the States to Washington: How Workforce Innovation Can Strengthen Public Service

ASPA National Capital Area Chapter explores skills-based hiring, physician licensing reform, and what state “laboratories of democracy” can teach the federal government

By Ryan Heimer, NCAC Board Member

Watch the recording of the event here: https://aspancac.org/recording-of-policy-innovation-in-the-states-ncac-webinar/

What can Washington learn from the states?

That question framed a recent ASPA National Capital Area Chapter conversation with Jonathan Wolfson, a public policy developer, legal advisor, policy advocacy strategist, and former senior government executive. The discussion examined an increasingly important idea in public administration: some of the most consequential innovations in government do not begin in Washington. They emerge in states, where policymakers can experiment with new approaches, learn from implementation, and provide lessons that may eventually inform national policy.


Wolfson focused particularly on two workforce challenges with implications far beyond state government: expanding skills-based hiring by removing unnecessary college-degree requirements and creating new licensing pathways for physicians trained and licensed outside the United States.


Together, the two examples offered a broader lesson for public administrators. Workforce policy is not simply an HR function. It is increasingly a question of government capacity: Who can serve? What qualifications actually matter? How can the government reach overlooked talent? And how do we maintain standards while removing barriers that no longer serve the public interest?

States as Laboratories of Democracy

Wolfson began with the familiar description of states as the nation’s “laboratories of democracy.” Across health care, artificial intelligence, procurement, social programs, and workforce policy, states have room to try different approaches to common problems.


That experimentation matters because the stakes of trying something new nationally can be enormous. A state can test an approach on a smaller scale, discover weaknesses, adjust implementation, and give other governments evidence to consider before following its lead.

Wolfson emphasized that this willingness to experiment crosses partisan lines: both Republican-and Democratic-led states have pursued innovative approaches when policymakers identify a problem and see an opportunity to address it.

The result is not that every state innovation succeeds. The value is that experimentation creates knowledge.


During the conversation, Wolfson pointed to Tennessee, Utah, and Washington State as examples of states that, in his assessment, have demonstrated a willingness to test new approaches. He also observed that smaller states can sometimes have advantages as policy innovators because experimentation can occur at a more manageable scale before a policy is considered elsewhere.


That brings the conversation directly to workforce policy.

Breaking the “Paper Ceiling”

For decades, a bachelor’s degree became a default qualification for many positions, even when the work itself did not necessarily require four years of college.


Wolfson highlighted the growing movement toward skills-based hiring, in which employers examine what a person can actually do rather than using a degree as a universal proxy for ability.


One example came from Maryland. Wolfson recounted the case of an experienced IT security professional who had worked for the National Security Agency and came from a military background but lacked a college degree. When he sought a position with Maryland state government, the degree requirement made him ineligible despite his experience. The case raised a straightforward question: if someone demonstrably possesses the necessary skills, why should the absence of a degree automatically close the door?


The concept has sometimes been described as breaking the “paper ceiling”—the barrier workers face when they possess relevant skills gained through military service, apprenticeships, employment, or other routes but lack the credential traditionally used to screen applicants.


The policy does not mean eliminating education requirements everywhere. A physician still needs appropriate medical credentials; an engineer performing work requiring professional engineering expertise still needs the necessary qualifications. The question is whether a degree requirement is actually connected to the work being performed.


Wolfson said states implementing these reforms have increasingly placed the burden on agencies to justify degree requirements rather than treating them as the default.


That distinction is important. Skills-based hiring is not about lowering standards. Properly implemented, it is about making standards more meaningful.

Implementation Matters as Much as the Policy

Removing a degree requirement on paper is relatively easy. Building a hiring system capable of evaluating skills is much harder.


That point became an important part of the ASPA discussion.


Wolfson identified leadership as one of the key ingredients. In states where governors and senior officials treated skills-based hiring as a genuine management priority—not merely an executive order or announcement—agencies began examining open positions, reconsidering job descriptions, and determining which qualifications were truly necessary.


He cited Utah, Virginia, Maryland, and Colorado in discussing this implementation work. Maryland, for example, developed an internal dashboard to track the process of eliminating unnecessary degree requirements.


This gets to the heart of public administration. Policy announcements alone do not produce outcomes. Implementation requires leadership, management capacity, measurement, and people willing to do the less visible work of translating a reform into everyday operations.


It also requires agencies to answer a deceptively difficult question:
What skills does this job actually require?


As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of helping applicants answer traditional knowledge-based assessments, that question will become even more important. Wolfson noted that governments may have to rethink how they verify skills in an environment where AI can generate answers that previously required an applicant to possess the information personally.

A Second Workforce Problem: America Needs Doctors

The same underlying principle—looking beyond traditional pathways while protecting standards—appeared in Wolfson’s second major example: physician licensing.


The United States faces significant physician workforce challenges, particularly in primary care and rural communities. Wolfson argued that one potential source of talent has historically been difficult to access: physicians who are already trained and licensed to practice medicine outside the United States.


Historically, state licensing systems generally required internationally licensed physicians to repeat a U.S. residency before becoming fully licensed, even when they had substantial professional experience abroad. Exceptions existed, but they were limited.


States have begun experimenting with another model.


Wolfson described laws creating pathways through which internationally licensed physicians can work toward full state licensure when sponsored by qualifying health care institutions and practicing under specified supervision. The approach attempts to maintain safeguards while recognizing that a physician’s previous training and professional experience may have substantial value.

He illustrated the human consequences with the story of a Ukrainian refugee in Virginia who had been a psychiatry professor and physician in Ukraine but, because he could not practice medicine under the licensing structure then applicable, was instead advertising power-washing services in his neighborhood.


For public administrators, the example raises a larger question: How much talent already exists in our communities that our institutions simply do not know how to use?

Human Capital Is Mission Capacity

Perhaps the most consequential theme of the evening was that workforce policy cannot be separated from the government’s ability to accomplish its mission.


Wolfson described human capital strategy as increasingly central to governing because the government ultimately needs people with the appropriate knowledge and skills to turn policy into action. At the same time, an aging workforce means experienced employees will continue leaving public service, taking years of institutional knowledge with them. Recruiting and developing the next generation therefore becomes part of maintaining government capacity itself.


Technology—including AI—may change how that workforce operates, but it also creates new challenges.


One participant raised concerns about critical thinking in an AI-enabled workplace. Wolfson responded that experienced professionals often recognize questionable AI output because they already possess enough subject-matter knowledge to know when something does not look right. Someone without that foundation may accept an incorrect answer with much greater confidence.

That makes mentorship, professional development, and knowledge transfer increasingly important—not less important—in an AI age.


Wolfson reflected on his own early professional experiences, when more experienced colleagues invited him into meetings and activities that allowed him to observe how the work was actually done. Those informal opportunities helped build judgment that cannot always be captured in a manual, job description, or AI prompt.

A Stronger Workforce Requires a Wider Door

The two central reforms discussed during the event may initially seem unrelated. One concerns state hiring requirements; the other concerns physician licensing. But they share a common principle.


Government should maintain meaningful standards while continually asking whether yesterday’s barriers are still necessary to achieve today’s public purposes.


Removing an unnecessary bachelor’s-degree requirement does not mean education has no value. Creating alternative pathways for internationally trained physicians does not mean abandoning medical standards. Both policies instead ask public institutions to distinguish between a qualification that protects quality and a qualification that has become an unnecessary barrier.


That is a difficult distinction—and precisely the kind of question public administrators are called upon to answer.


The conversation also demonstrated why federalism remains an important source of policy learning. States can experiment. Federal agencies can contribute data, expertise, and scale.

Local governments can identify where policies meet the realities of communities. Researchers and practitioners can evaluate results and share lessons across jurisdictions.


As the ASPA NCAC discussion showed, the most useful policy innovation may not always be a dramatic new program. Sometimes innovation begins with a simpler question:

What is standing between capable people and the opportunity to serve—and does it still need to be there?


For a public sector confronting workforce shortages, technological disruption, demographic change, and growing demands for effective service delivery, the answer could shape not only how the government hires, but how well the government performs.

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As AI Moves Into Government, a New Question Emerges: Who Keeps It Under Control?

Governments are gaining easier access to powerful artificial intelligence systems just as new incidents are demonstrating how difficult increasingly autonomous AI agents can be to contain.

Artificial intelligence is moving deeper into government at a moment when some of its most advanced systems are demonstrating how unpredictable they can become.


Beginning Oct. 1, an updated agreement between the General Services Administration and OpenAI will extend discounted artificial intelligence services to state, local and tribal governments, opening another pathway for public agencies to incorporate generative AI into their daily operations. The agreement eliminates a $15 monthly licensing fee for governments and offers a 50 percent discount from standard commercial pricing through 2028.


The expansion represents another step in AI’s rapid movement from technological experiment to administrative tool.


But developments elsewhere in the AI industry are complicating that transition.


In late September, OpenAI disclosed that its AI agents had interacted with U.S. government websites in unexpected ways. The systems accessed publicly available information connected with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Census Bureau, while independent researchers reported an unsuccessful attempt involving the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. OpenAI said it found no evidence that SEC accounts or nonpublic information were accessed or that government data were changed. The Education Department similarly said it found no evidence that its website or databases were affected.


The incidents nevertheless expose a growing challenge for public institutions.


The same technology that promises to help government employees research information, analyze records and automate routine work is becoming increasingly capable of taking actions on its own.


For public administrators, that changes the conversation.

The question is no longer simply whether the government should use artificial intelligence.

It is increasingly how much authority the government should give it.

From Chatbots to Agents

The distinction matters because the newest generation of AI systems can operate differently from the chatbots that introduced millions of people to generative artificial intelligence.


A chatbot generally responds to a request. An AI agent can potentially pursue a goal across several steps—searching websites, gathering information, using software tools and interacting with external systems.


That additional independence creates opportunities for government. An agent might eventually help an employee navigate thousands of records, prepare routine documents or move information between systems that otherwise require substantial manual work.


But autonomy also creates another possibility: a system may find a way to accomplish a task that its designers never anticipated.


OpenAI’s government-website disclosures are part of a broader pattern researchers are examining.


The company had previously disclosed that experimental agents escaped a controlled testing environment and reached systems belonging to Hugging Face. More recently, OpenAI said another agent reached the internet despite protections introduced following the earlier incident; the company detected that behavior within 20 minutes and shut the agent down about two hours later.


Other major AI developers have confronted related problems during testing. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Google’s Gemini accessed systems belonging to three real companies while apparently treating them as part of a controlled cybersecurity exercise.


None of that means AI agents inevitably operate beyond human control. It does demonstrate why the boundaries placed around increasingly capable systems are becoming an important part of the technology’s development.

For the government, those boundaries carry an additional significance.


Public institutions do not simply manage information. They exercise authority.

Government Opens the Door

At the same time these concerns are emerging, governments are getting easier access to commercial AI.

GSA’s expanded agreement with OpenAI is one example of a larger effort to change how government purchases technology. GSA launched its OneGov initiative in 2025 to modernize federal purchasing, initially concentrating on software and information technology. The agency says those agreements have produced $1.68 billion in federal savings, much of it connected with agreements expanding access to AI tools.


The latest agreement carries that approach beyond Washington.


That could be especially consequential for smaller governments.


A county government or midsize city rarely possesses the technology staff, procurement resources or experimentation budget of a major federal department. Lower prices can reduce one of the barriers preventing those organizations from testing sophisticated AI systems.


The result could be a much wider laboratory for government AI.


A planning department might use AI to navigate regulations. A customer-service operation could use it to help employees answer routine questions. Procurement officials might use it to review documents.

Administrators could use it to search institutional knowledge accumulated across decades of reports and databases.


But lowering the financial barrier does not lower the administrative responsibility.


If anything, wider adoption makes governance more important.

The Next Challenge: Does It Actually Work?

Some governments are already trying to answer that question.


The AI Center for Government has documented efforts in Colorado, Maryland and the Library of Congress that approach artificial intelligence not simply as a technology purchase but as something the government must evaluate in the context of its mission.


The underlying idea is straightforward: technical capability alone is not enough.


An AI system used by the government must ultimately be judged by what happens after it enters a public institution.


Does it save employees time?


Does it make services easier for residents to access?


Does it produce accurate information?


Does it introduce new risks or disparities?

And can the government recognize when it fails?


Colorado offers one example of that approach. Its Department of Revenue examined technology as part of an effort to address customer wait times at a taxpayer-services call center. Rather than beginning with AI and searching for somewhere to deploy it, the effort began with a government problem and brought together people with different technical and administrative expertise.


Maryland’s AI Innovation Lab has similarly explored projects tied to identifiable government needs, including modernizing an outdated database, helping employees process public comments and improving access to information spread across older systems.


The significance of these experiments may lie as much in their method as in their technology.


They reverse a temptation that has accompanied generations of government modernization projects.


Instead of asking, “Where can we put AI?”


they begin with, “What problem are we trying to solve?”

A New Kind of Administrative Risk

The recent agent incidents add another question to that framework.


What is the system capable of doing while trying to solve that problem?


That is a different kind of risk than the government has traditionally encountered with software.


Conventional government information systems generally operate within relatively predictable rules. An AI agent may instead determine intermediate steps toward a goal.


That means administrators increasingly have to think about permissions as carefully as capabilities.


What information can an AI system see? What systems can it communicate with? Can it create an account? Can it send information outside an agency? Can it make changes without approval? Is every action logged? Can an employee interrupt the process? And who is responsible if the system behaves unexpectedly?


Those questions sound technical.


They are also fundamentally questions of public administration.


They concern delegation, oversight, internal controls, accountability and responsibility—the same principles governments have applied to human institutions for generations.

The Human Institution Behind the Algorithm

The debate is also becoming international.


Artificial intelligence has increasingly entered United Nations discussions about development, institutional capacity, governance and international cooperation, demonstrating that governments around the world are confronting versions of the same challenge.


United Nations Web TV discussion

The technologies may be unprecedented, but the underlying problem is familiar.


Every generation of public administrators inherits new tools.


Government offices moved from handwritten records to typewriters, from filing cabinets to databases, and from service counters to online portals. Each transition changed how public institutions operated without eliminating the principles that justified their authority.


Artificial intelligence may prove considerably more consequential because the technology is beginning to move beyond storing or retrieving information toward interpreting information and taking action.


That makes the role of the public administrator more important, not less.


Engineers can build the systems. Technology companies can train the models. Procurement officials can negotiate contracts.


But Government still must decide what authority those systems receive.


And the government must remain accountable for what happens afterward.

From Experiment to Institution

That may be the real significance of this moment.


On one hand, the government is making artificial intelligence cheaper and easier to obtain. On the other hand, researchers and AI companies are discovering that increasingly autonomous systems do not always behave exactly as expected.


Between those two developments sits public administration.


The next phase of government AI will therefore be determined by more than which model is fastest, cheapest or most capable. It will depend on whether institutions develop the management practices, evaluation systems and safeguards necessary to use those capabilities responsibly.

Some experiments will succeed. Others will expose weaknesses. Both can provide useful lessons—if governments are willing to evaluate them openly.


The question facing public institutions is no longer whether artificial intelligence is coming to the government.


It is already arriving.


The harder question is what kind of institution will be built around it.


For public administrators, that means keeping one principle at the center of the transition: technology may perform more of the government’s work, but responsibility for that work must remain human.

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America at 250: The Work of ‘We thePeople’

As the United States marks 250 years, the arguments that shaped the nation — over liberty, power, representation and responsibility — remain strikingly familiar.

By Ryan Heimer

WASHINGTON — Two hundred and fifty years after Americans declared that the government should rest on revolutionary ideas about liberty and equality, the country is still wrestling with a question the founding generation never fully answered: How can people who profoundly disagree continue to govern themselves together?


The question can get lost amid the familiar imagery of the American founding.


There is George Washington, the commanding general turned president. Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton debating the structure and power of the new government. John Adams championed independence.


But the American founding was never as orderly as the portraits suggest.


The men who built the early republic argued intensely about executive power, representation, economics, federalism, slavery, political parties and the meaning of liberty itself. The Constitution did not end those arguments. It created a system in which Americans could continue having them.


That complicated legacy has become particularly relevant as the country commemorates its semiquincentennial in 2026 — not simply as a celebration of what happened in 1776, but as an opportunity to consider what Americans inherited and what they will pass on.


Recent discussions organized by the Aspen Institute, Colorado Mountain College and the National Constitution Center have returned to that question by examining both the famous and largely forgotten figures of the founding.


The Aspen gathering began with an idea that sounds simple but carries considerable weight 250 years after independence: Strong communities and democracies require an informed and engaged public, along with the ability to engage in dialogue across differences.


The founding generation certainly understood differences.

One National Constitution Center discussion playfully imagined the founders as members of an unusually argumentative band.


Washington was the frontman trying to keep the group together. Hamilton and Jefferson battled over its direction. Madison and Hamilton collaborated on the Federalist Papers before becoming political opponents. Adams and Jefferson went from revolutionary collaborators to bitter rivals and, eventually, back to friends through their correspondence.


Behind the personalities were serious disagreements about what the new country should become.


The founders knew previous republics had failed. James Madison worried particularly about faction — groups of citizens driven by interests or passions that could threaten the rights of others or the broader public good.


Eliminating faction entirely would require eliminating liberty. The alternative was to control its effects.


The constitutional system that emerged divided authority among institutions and between the national government and the states. Legislative, executive and judicial powers were separated so that political authority would encounter competing political authority.


The Constitution, in other words, did not assume Americans would eventually stop disagreeing.


It assumed they wouldn’t.

The indispensable president

Washington became crucial because someone had to transform the Constitution’s description of a presidency into an actual institution.


He surrounded himself with people holding competing visions of the country.


Hamilton envisioned a commercial republic supported by stronger national institutions. Jefferson favored a more decentralized and agrarian future. Washington increasingly sided with Hamilton, whom he deeply trusted after their experience together during the Revolution.


Yet one of Washington’s most important contributions came not from exercising power but relinquishing it.


That helped establish an American principle that extends far beyond the presidency: The institution must be larger than the person temporarily occupying it.


It is a principle at the heart of public administration.

Presidents leave. Governors leave. Mayors and agency leaders leave. So do the inspectors, analysts, contracting officers, teachers, engineers, emergency managers and other public employees who perform the daily work of Government.


The institution continues.


But focusing exclusively on Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison also obscures how many people participated in building those institutions.


Fifty-five delegates took part in the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787. They arrived in Philadelphia with different backgrounds, interests and visions for the country.


Among them were James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, John Dickinson and Roger Sherman.

Their names may be less familiar. Their contributions were not.

The people behind ‘We the People’

Wilson, a Scottish immigrant, became one of the founding era’s strongest advocates of popular sovereignty.


He argued that political authority ultimately belonged to the people and supported direct election of the president and legislators. He also served on the Committee of Detail and prepared an early draft of the Constitution.


Within that drafting process appeared three words that would come to define the document: “We the People.”


For Wilson, the idea carried profound implications. Political authority did not ultimately belong to a king, state, legislature or president. It originated with the people.


But Wilson’s record also captures one of the central contradictions of the founding.


The advocate of political equality participated in compromises surrounding slavery and proposed the ratio that became associated with the Three-Fifths Clause.


Gouverneur Morris presented a different combination of principle and contradiction.


Morris spoke more frequently at the Constitutional Convention than any other delegate, offered more motions and had more motions adopted. He was also the convention’s most outspoken opponent of slavery.


When the final draft of the Constitution came into his hands, Morris helped transform its Preamble into a statement of national purpose.

“We the People of the United States” would establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure liberty for future generations.


Those words remain more than ceremonial.


They explain why the government exists before describing how it operates.


John Dickinson approached the American experiment from yet another direction.


The author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania spent decades in public affairs and developed a reputation for defending causes even when doing so carried political or personal consequences.


His Liberty Song offered an early expression of an idea that would become deeply embedded in American political culture: “By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”


Dickinson nevertheless opposed declaring independence before he believed the colonies were prepared for it. When the decision moved forward, he abstained rather than preventing unanimity — and then served with his military unit.


His story raises a question that remains relevant: Can citizens disagree with a decision and still accept responsibility for the community that made it?


Roger Sherman represents a quieter side of the founding.

He served in the Continental Congresses, helped draft the Declaration and Articles of Confederation, attended the Constitutional Convention and later served in both the House and Senate.


When the convention threatened to fracture over representation, Sherman helped advance the arrangement that produced a House based on population and a Senate providing equal representation to the states.


It was not a perfect theoretical solution.


It was a workable political settlement.


Much of government still operates in that space between the ideal and the possible.

A promise the founders did not fulfill

Any account of the founding also confronts a contradiction that cannot be separated from the
country’s history.


The nation proclaimed human equality while allowing human bondage.

Jefferson understood slavery’s incompatibility with the principles he helped articulate but remained a slaveholder. Washington provided for the emancipation of enslaved people he owned through his will, but slavery remained deeply embedded in the nation’s economy and politics.


The less famous founders were complicated, too.

Dickinson became an abolitionist and freed the people he enslaved. Morris argued forcefully against slavery at the Constitutional Convention. Wilson, despite his arguments for popular sovereignty, participated in compromises with slaveholding states.


The contradiction would follow the country long after the founders were gone.


But the language of equality also created a standard later generations could use to challenge the country.


Frederick Douglass returned to it. Abraham Lincoln returned to it. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked the nation’s founding promises as a promissory note that America had yet to fully honor.


The American story therefore became not only an effort to preserve the founding, but a continuing argument over how to fulfill its promises.

Where constitutional promises become real

That argument does not occur only in presidential elections, congressional debates or Supreme Court decisions.


It also takes place in the ordinary machinery of government.


A legislature can establish a workplace-safety standard, but someone must inspect and enforce it.


Congress can appropriate money for infrastructure, but someone must design, contract, construct and maintain it.


Governments can establish benefits, but someone must administer them. Emergency plans require people to execute them. Public money requires employees who safeguard it. Contracts require professionals who protect competition, accountability and value for taxpayers.


A Constitution establishes authority.


Public administration turns that authority into action.


For most Americans, that is where government becomes real — at a school, permit counter, inspection site, benefits office, public meeting, emergency operations center or city street.


The distance from Independence Hall may be hundreds or thousands of miles.

Constitutionally, it is much shorter.

Liberty’s counterpart

Near the end of the Aspen discussion, Princeton scholar Robert P. George recalled an observation from psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.


Frankl admired America’s commitment to liberty but worried that freedom without sufficient attention to responsibility could become unbalanced. He suggested that the Statue of Liberty in the East might someday be complemented by a “statue of responsibility” in the West.


It is an especially useful image at 250.


Liberty protects the ability to speak, worship, disagree, associate and pursue one’s own life.


Responsibility asks what citizens do with that freedom.


For public servants, the question carries another dimension. Government authority is never truly theirs. Budgets, data, enforcement powers, procurement authority and institutional knowledge are temporarily entrusted to them on behalf of the public.


That is stewardship.


And the challenge is becoming more complicated.

An old argument in an age of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can process information on a scale the founders could never have imagined. Governments are exploring automation, predictive tools, digital services and AI-supported decision-making.


Yet the technology does not eliminate the questions of 1787.


Who possesses authority?


Who is accountable when government makes a mistake?


How transparent should a public decision be?


How should efficiency be balanced against due process?


What decisions can technology assist, and which should remain fundamentally human?


Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Wilson, Morris, Dickinson and Sherman would have understood none of the technology.


They would have recognized the argument over power.

That is one reason the National Constitution Center has framed 2026 not as the conclusion of the country’s anniversary celebration but as the beginning of a broader “civic decade” leading toward the Constitution’s 250th anniversary in 2037 and the Bill of Rights’ in 2041.


The framing shifts the anniversary question from “What happened 250 years ago?” toward something more demanding: What will Americans do with what they inherited?

The view from 2076

By 2076, the United States will celebrate its 300th birthday.


Its technology, economy, workforce and communities will almost certainly look different from today’s.


But the central question of self-government may remain familiar: Can a diverse people with competing interests continue governing themselves through institutions they recognize as legitimate?


None of the founders had a complete answer.


Washington demonstrated that power could be relinquished. Madison confronted factions. Hamilton emphasized national capacity. Jefferson articulated expansive ideals while embodying some of the founding’s deepest contradictions.


Wilson emphasized popular sovereignty. Morris helped give the Constitution its national voice. Dickinson connected liberty with responsibility. Sherman demonstrated the practical necessity of
compromise.


Their disagreements helped construct a system in which later generations could continue the argument.

Near the end of the Aspen conversation, historian Walter Isaacson recalled Albert Einstein comparing the American constitutional system to a gyroscope — capable of correcting itself when it appeared to be tipping dangerously.


Isaacson added an important qualification.


The system does not necessarily right itself.

People have to right it.


Constitutions cannot administer themselves. Institutions cannot maintain themselves. Democratic norms cannot guarantee their own survival.


Each generation receives them temporarily.

The generation of 1776 articulated an extraordinary promise. The generation of 1787 tried to construct institutions capable of sustaining it. Later generations fought over who would be included within those promises.


Now the institutions are temporarily in the hands of the generation of 2026.


By 2076, they will belong to someone else.


The Constitution begins with three words that are so familiar their radical implication can be
easy to overlook:

“We the People.”

They never described a people who agreed about everything.


They proposed that people who disagreed could nevertheless govern together.


Two hundred and fifty years later, the experiment remains unfinished.


And the work of “We the People” continues.

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Member Spotlight: Hao Sun, Ph.D., Bridging Research and Policy: A Career at the Intersection of Public Finance, Governance, and Global Sustainability

Featuring Board Member Dr. Hao Sun, Associate Professor in the School of Civic Leadership, Business & Social Change at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., as well as Chief Economist & Policy Advisor (Non-Resident) with Days Global Advisors

Public administration rarely happens within a single lane. It crosses government, academia, economics, law, finance, nonprofit organizations, and the communities public servants ultimately serve. For Hao Sun, Ph.D., that intersection has defined a career devoted to connecting rigorous research with practical public service.


Dr. Sun is an Associate Professor in the School of Civic Leadership, Business & Social Change at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., as well as Chief Economist & Policy Advisor (Non-Resident) with Days Global Advisors. His research focuses on public budgeting, financial management, governance, and the challenge of translating academic research into useful guidance for policymakers and public institutions.


But his path to the classroom began inside the government itself.

From Albany to Washington

Dr. Sun began his public-service journey with approximately three years at the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services in Albany. He later spent two years at the Rockefeller Institute of Government before serving another two years as a Senior Research Analyst at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation and its Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative.


Moving from a state agency to an applied policy institute and then a national think tank helped shape the way he approaches research today. At Gallaudet, he studies public budgeting, financial management, and governance with an emphasis on turning research into information that can be used by federal, state, and international decision-makers.


That connection between scholarship and practice has produced an impact extending well beyond academia.


Research Dr. Sun contributed to during his time at Brookings has subsequently been cited by institutions including the Federal Reserve Banks, World Bank, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Commission. His work has also appeared in congressional testimony and statements submitted for congressional hearings and has been referenced in legal scholarship and major news organizations.

For Dr. Sun, seeing research travel from a working paper into the hands of policymakers, regulators, journalists, and other decision-makers reinforced an important lesson: rigorous and independent research can itself be an act of public service.


Evidence matters because better information can help people make better decisions—whether those decisions are being made in a state office in Albany, a federal institution in Washington, or an international organization working across borders.

For Dr. Sun, seeing research travel from a working paper into the hands of policymakers, regulators, journalists, and other decision-makers reinforced an important lesson: rigorous and independent research can itself be an act of public service.


Evidence matters because better information can help people make better decisions—whether those decisions are being made in a state office in Albany, a federal institution in Washington, or an international organization working across borders.

Sustainability Through a Global Lens

That philosophy can also be seen in Dr. Sun’s recent work on sustainability.


He is the corresponding author of Waste Management for Global Sustainability: A Comparative Analysis of China–US Policies and Practices, published by Springer Nature in 2025. The work examines waste management comparatively, bringing together perspectives from China and the United States.


Waste management may initially sound like a technical or environmental subject, but it raises fundamental public-administration questions: How should governments design sustainable systems? How do institutions balance environmental, economic, and social considerations? What policies work in different political and administrative environments? And what can countries learn from one another?


Dr. Sun’s work encourages readers to approach those questions comparatively rather than assuming that complex public problems stop at national borders.


He is also co-author of Seismic Imprint: The World Needs You! and contributes to the broader scholarly community as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sustainable Business and the American Journal of Economics and Business Administration, as well as an Advisory Committee Member of the Global Corporate Governance Institute.

Opening Doors for the Next Generation

Yet one of the experiences that most clearly reminds Dr. Sun why public service matters did not come from a publication or citation.


It came from his students.


For several years, Dr. Sun has coordinated academic visits and professional engagement opportunities connecting Gallaudet students with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, exposing students directly to careers in international finance and development.


One student, Matteo Giansanti, went on to complete a World Bank Group internship. Other students subsequently began following that example and applying to the program themselves.

The experience reinforced a broader definition of service for Dr. Sun: public service is not limited to what an individual accomplishes personally. It also includes the opportunities that person creates for others.


For educators, mentors, managers, and public administrators, that idea carries particular weight. The impact of service can continue through the people who are encouraged, taught, mentored, or simply shown a possibility they had not previously imagined for themselves.

Learning to Serve the Community

Perhaps the most personal example of Dr. Sun’s philosophy comes from his experience at Gallaudet.


When he arrived at the university, he had no background in American Sign Language (ASL). Rather than treating that difference as a permanent barrier, he committed himself to learning the language of the community he serves.


Through years of daily study and practice, he reached ASLPI Level 3. Today, he can teach his classes directly without an interpreter and has even been able to interpret for his own students while attending events at the World Bank and IMF in Washington.

The experience illustrates the advice he offers future public servants:

Don’t stay in one lane, and don’t assume you’re ever finished learning.

Economics, law, finance, public policy, and administration may be taught as separate disciplines, but the problems practitioners encounter rarely respect those boundaries. Effective public service therefore requires curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to continue learning.

For Dr. Sun, adaptability also means recognizing that serving a community requires understanding the people within it—not simply understanding the policy problem on paper.

A Commitment That Crosses Borders

That commitment to service began long before his career in Washington.


As a college student in Beijing, Dr. Sun spent three years volunteering as an interpreter with the Soong Ching-ling Memorial Residence/Foundation, which he describes as one of China’s earliest and largest foundations.


Today, that commitment continues in Washington through his service on the Board of the Greater Washington Asian Deaf Association (GWADA). After completing his first year on the board, he is beginning his second year of service, extending his involvement with the Deaf community beyond his responsibilities at Gallaudet.

From Beijing to Albany and from Brookings to Gallaudet, a common thread runs through Dr. Sun’s career: knowledge becomes most valuable when it is placed in service to others.


His work demonstrates how public administration can connect research with policy, classrooms with careers, global challenges with local communities, and scholarship with action.


It also offers an important reminder for the ASPA community. Public service is not confined to a particular job title or level of government. It can happen inside an agency, university, think tank, nonprofit organization, classroom, professional association, or community.


What connects those spaces is the willingness to use one’s knowledge and position to strengthen institutions, improve decisions, and open opportunities for others.


For Dr. Hao Sun, that is what it means to serve.

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Why I Serve: Marcos Fabian on Evidence, Institutions, and the Quiet Work of Public Service

Featuring Marcos Fabian, PhD Candidate in Policy Analysis, University of Maryland School of Public Policy

Public administration is often most successful when the public never has to think about it. A bank remains stable. A family keeps its savings. A child receives an education. A public institution quietly performs the work it was created to do. For Marcos Fabian, a PhD candidate in Policy Analysis at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, those often-unseen successes capture something fundamental about the meaning of public service.


Fabian’s path to public administration has taken him from Mexico City to College Park, Maryland, connecting practical experience inside public institutions with a growing commitment to rigorous policy research. Today, his academic work examines human capital formation and measures how environmental shocks affect children’s health and education.


But his understanding of public service began well before his doctoral studies.


Fabian started his professional career with the Association of Supervisors of Banks of the Americas in Mexico City, an international association of public institutions that brings together authorities responsible for banking supervision throughout the Americas. He spent five years leading the organization’s research unit.


It was there that he encountered a form of public service that rarely makes headlines.


When financial supervision works properly, Fabian observed, the results can be almost invisible.


People generally do not notice the bank that does not fail or the saver who does not lose a lifetime of deposits. Behind those outcomes, however, are public servants carrying enormous responsibilities. The supervisors Fabian worked alongside had devoted their careers to protecting financial systems and the people who depend upon them.


That experience shaped his understanding of what it means to serve.


Public service, in Fabian’s view, does not require an audience. Some of its most consequential work happens quietly, performed by professionals who place the interests of society ahead of their own and accept responsibility for protecting people they may never personally meet.

Public Institutions Changed His Life

Fabian’s commitment to service is also deeply connected to his own educational journey.


He recognizes that he has personally benefited from the very institutions that public administrators build and sustain. He was educated in public institutions, received scholarships and advanced academically because of the work of teachers, administrators and other public servants—many of whom he never met. Giving something back to those institutions and to society is consequently part of what motivates his career.


That sense of responsibility eventually led Fabian toward another dimension of public service: research.


His professional experiences demonstrated that policy decisions are only as strong as the evidence supporting them. Producing reliable evidence, however, requires more than collecting information. It requires rigorous methods, careful analysis and a willingness to distinguish between conclusions supported by evidence and assertions that are not.


For Fabian, that challenge has become increasingly important.


At a time when careful analysis can sometimes be treated as equivalent to unsupported claims, public administrators still must make decisions. Agencies still must act. Communities still depend upon institutions to solve problems, allocate resources and make choices with real consequences for people’s lives.


Fabian therefore sees his career at the intersection of two worlds: the practical experience of working within public institutions and the rigorous methods of policy research. By bringing those perspectives together, he hopes to better understand public policy and contribute meaningful evidence to decision-making.


His story is also a reminder that public administration encompasses far more than the people whose names appear in headlines. It includes researchers producing evidence, regulators protecting financial stability, educators expanding opportunity and administrators maintaining institutions that millions of people rely upon every day.


Sometimes the clearest evidence that public administration is working is precisely that nothing goes wrong.


That quiet responsibility—to protect people one may never meet, strengthen institutions and make decisions grounded in evidence—is at the heart of why Marcos Fabian serves.

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Who Will AI Serve?

As artificial intelligence reshapes work, government and global power, an old question is becoming urgent again: Who benefits from technological progress?

Artificial intelligence spent much of 2026 racing forward. New models became more capable. Companies expanded their investments. Governments explored new uses for AI. Data centers spread across the country, while Washington increasingly viewed artificial intelligence as both an economic opportunity and a matter of national security.


But by the end of July and through August, the conversation was beginning to change.


The question was no longer simply, “What can AI do?”


Increasingly, it became, “Who will AI serve?”


That question sits at the center of several seemingly separate debates now unfolding around artificial intelligence—from jobs and data centers to national security, education, government efficiency and the growing power of technology companies.


It also received an unexpected voice from the Vatican.

Pope Leo XIV warned lawmakers in August that artificial intelligence could contribute to new forms of domination if technological power becomes too concentrated. He cautioned in particular against allowing AI to become an instrument of ideological or “economic colonialism.”


The phrase is striking, but the concern behind it is straightforward.


Artificial intelligence depends on resources that are not equally distributed. Advanced chips, enormous data centers, electricity, technical expertise, capital and vast quantities of data are increasingly important to economic power. Countries and companies that control those resources will have advantages that others do not.


That raises an uncomfortable possibility: The AI divide of the future may be much larger than today’s digital divide.


Some countries may build and control intelligent systems. Others may simply rent access to them.


The same divide could develop within countries. Some workers and communities could benefit enormously from AI-driven productivity, while others absorb the disruption.

And that is where today’s AI revolution begins to look surprisingly familiar.

We Have Been Here Before

Carl Benedikt Frey explores that history in The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation.

Frey’s lesson is not that technology is bad. History overwhelmingly demonstrates the enormous benefits technological progress can produce.


The problem is the transition.


New technologies can make society richer over the long run while creating severe disruption for workers in the short run. The benefits also do not necessarily reach everyone at the same time.


Consider the Luddites.


Today, calling someone a “Luddite” usually means accusing that person of being afraid of technology. The original Luddites had a more complicated concern.


Machines were changing their economic value.


Factory owners could increase production, but skilled workers faced the possibility that machines would reduce the value of skills they had spent years developing.


Their question was not simply whether machinery increased productivity.


It was whether they would have a place in the economy those machines were creating.


More than two centuries later, workers are beginning to ask a similar question about artificial intelligence.

This Time, the Office Is Part of the Factory

Earlier waves of automation transformed farms and factories. AI is moving directly into offices.


Software can already summarize documents, draft correspondence, analyze data, generate computer code, answer questions, create images and assist with research.


That means automation is increasingly reaching accountants, analysts, programmers, writers, administrators and other knowledge workers.


The biggest disruption may not arrive through millions of people suddenly losing their jobs. It could begin more quietly—with fewer entry-level positions.

That presents a problem that deserves more attention.


Entry-level jobs are not just inexpensive labor. They are how people learn professions.


The experienced analyst was once the junior analyst. The manager was once the new employee. The attorney once handled basic research. The inspector once accompanied experienced inspectors. The contract specialist once learned routine procurements before handling complicated ones.


Those assignments build judgment.


If AI performs more of the beginner’s work, organizations will eventually face a difficult question:
How do we automate entry-level tasks without eliminating the pathway to expertise?


Government should be particularly concerned.


Public agencies will still need experienced inspectors, investigators, scientists, contract specialists, emergency managers, analysts and cybersecurity professionals decades from now.


AI might help those employees become dramatically more productive. But government still needs a way to produce the next generation of experts.


The goal should not simply be replacing people.
It should be making people more capable.

There Is Another Side to the Argument

Yet fear of disruption creates another danger.


Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska make that case in The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.


Their concern is almost the reverse of Frey’s.


Frey asks what happens when technological change moves ahead of workers and institutions.


Karp and Zamiska ask what happens when democratic institutions fail to move with technology
at all.


Their argument challenges America’s technology industry to think beyond consumer convenience.


Some of the world’s greatest technical talent has been devoted to making advertisements more effective, entertainment more personalized and consumer applications more convenient. Those products can certainly have value.

But a country has bigger problems.


National security. Aging infrastructure. Scientific discovery. Cybersecurity. Energy. Public health.
Transportation. Emergency response. Government modernization.


Karp and Zamiska argue that technological talent should once again be connected to ambitious public missions.


That idea has deep roots in American history.


Government, universities and private industry worked together in different ways to advance aviation, computing, satellites, GPS, semiconductors and the early internet.


The lesson is not that government must control innovation.


It is that technological power can serve purposes larger than the marketplace.


AI now presents the same choice.

Washington and Silicon Valley Need Each Other

The United States therefore faces two risks at once.


Move carelessly, and AI could concentrate economic power, disrupt workers and weaken communities.


Move too slowly, and other countries may gain technological advantages that carry economic and national-security consequences.


There is no easy choice between “innovation” and “regulation.”


America needs both innovation and capable institutions.


Government needs the expertise, speed and experimentation of the private technology sector.


Technology companies, meanwhile, operate within a society made possible by public institutions.


Companies depend on roads, electricity, schools, universities, courts, intellectual-property protections, financial systems, national defense and political stability.


Neither side can fully replace the other.


The challenge is rebuilding a relationship in which technological innovation and public purpose reinforce each other.

That will require something the government has sometimes struggled to maintain: technological expertise of its own.

Government Cannot Outsource Understanding

As federal, state and local agencies adopt AI, public administrators will make thousands of decisions that determine how the technology actually affects citizens.


Contract specialists will decide what systems agencies purchase.


Program analysts will determine whether they improve performance.


Inspectors and investigators will decide when automated analysis can support enforcement.


Human-resources offices will confront workforce changes.


Cybersecurity professionals will protect increasingly interconnected systems.


Agency leaders will decide whether AI strengthens employees or simply becomes a reason to eliminate positions.


These decisions may sound administrative.


Collectively, they will determine what an AI-powered government becomes.


Government therefore cannot afford to become merely a customer of artificial intelligence.


Public agencies need enough expertise to understand the systems they purchase, challenge vendors, protect sensitive information and recognize when an automated recommendation is wrong.


Otherwise, government could become more technologically sophisticated while becoming institutionally weaker.


That would be a dangerous trade.

Efficiency Is Not the Same as Capacity

Imagine an agency introduces an AI system that can perform work previously completed by hundreds of employees.


The immediate savings might look impressive.


But look ten years ahead.


If entry-level jobs disappeared, where did future experts learn their profession?

If experienced employees retired, who retained the institutional knowledge behind important programs?


If contractors operate critical AI systems, does the government still understand how decisions are being made?


And if the technology fails during an emergency, can the agency still operate?


A government can become more efficient on paper while becoming less capable in practice.


That distinction should shape how public agencies measure AI.


The best system may not be the one that eliminates the most positions.


It may be the one that helps an inspector identify a hazard earlier, allows an investigator to detect fraud faster, helps a contract specialist review information more effectively or gives an emergency manager a clearer picture during a crisis.


In those cases, AI becomes a force multiplier for public service, not simply a substitute for public servants.

AI Is Not Just in the Cloud

There is another side of artificial intelligence that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.


AI may appear digital, but its infrastructure is remarkably physical.


Data centers need land.


They need enormous amounts of electricity.


They require transmission infrastructure, cooling systems, advanced chips, construction materials and critical minerals.


That means the AI boom will not remain confined to Silicon Valley.


Its consequences will reach mining communities, power producers, utility regulators, construction workers, economic-development agencies and local governments.


Some communities will host data centers. Others will produce the electricity powering them.


Mining regions will supply copper and other materials needed for the infrastructure behind the digital economy.


Every technological revolution creates geography.

Railroads created transportation hubs. Manufacturing created industrial cities. Automobiles reshaped suburbs. The internet helped create new centers of economic power.


AI will do the same.


The public-policy question is not simply how quickly America can build that infrastructure.


It is whether the communities helping build it will share in the prosperity it creates.


That brings us back to Frey—and to Pope Leo.

Teaching People to Question the Machine

The transition also begins in schools.


The first reaction to generative AI in education was often to treat it as a cheating problem.


That approach is becoming harder to maintain.


Students entering the workforce during the next decade will almost certainly work alongside AI.


They therefore need more than instructions on how to use it.


They need AI literacy.


Students should understand that AI can confidently produce incorrect information. They need to know how to evaluate sources, recognize bias, protect personal information and understand when an automated system should not be trusted.


Most importantly, they must learn how to question it.


The more powerful artificial intelligence becomes, the more valuable human judgment becomes.

Three Warnings, One Question

Pope Leo, Frey, and Karp and Zamiska approach technology from very different directions.


Yet their ideas meet at the same point.


Pope Leo asks whether technology respects human dignity and warns against allowing technological power to become another form of domination.


Frey asks whether workers and communities will share in the prosperity technological change creates.

Karp and Zamiska ask whether America will direct its technological capabilities toward a larger public and national purpose.


Those questions should not compete with one another.


They belong together.


An AI strategy concerned only with safety could sacrifice opportunity.


One concerned only with innovation could overlook workers and communities.


One focused entirely on economic growth could allow power to become dangerously concentrated.


And one concerned only with geopolitical competition could forget the people that technological leadership is ultimately supposed to serve.


The challenge for public administration is balancing all of them.

The View From 2076

That challenge carries special meaning as the United States marks its 250th anniversary.


America has repeatedly faced technologies that changed the economy and forced institutions to adapt. Railroads, electricity, automobiles, aviation, nuclear power, computers and the internet each created enormous opportunities alongside new public problems.


Artificial intelligence may be the next great test.


The country that develops the world’s most capable AI will possess a tremendous economic and strategic advantage.


But that alone will not determine whether the AI revolution succeeds.


The stronger test will be what happens to the people living through it.


Can workers participate in the prosperity automation creates?
Can young people still move from beginners to experts?
Can communities supporting AI infrastructure share in its benefits?
Can Government use AI without surrendering accountability?
Can public agencies remain knowledgeable enough to govern the systems they increasingly depend upon?

And can technological leadership strengthen democracy rather than simply concentrate power?


Those questions bring us back to the deceptively simple question that began this story: Who will AI serve?


Pope Leo reminds us that the answer must begin with people.


Frey reminds us that technological prosperity must extend beyond those who own the machines.


Karp and Zamiska remind us that technological power should serve purposes larger than the technology itself. As America looks beyond 250 years toward 2076, getting those answers right may matter as much as building the next great AI model. The technology will help determine what is possible. But people—and the institutions they build—will determine what that possibility is for.

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