Publications: Daniel Castro

Education Secretary Linda McMahon proposed eliminating the Department of Education by cutting federal bureaucracy to empower state-led innovation, but true transformation in American education requires a national commitment to investing in AI-driven personalized learning.

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has aggressively downsized the federal workforce. To maintain essential services with fewer staff, the administration must embrace digital transformation, leveraging AI, automation, and self-service portals to improve efficiency and modernize government operations.

A well-calibrated approach that prevents Chinese companies like Shein and Temu from exploiting loopholes while incentivizing compliance and supporting vetted sellers on U.S. platforms would best serve U.S. economic and strategic interests.

Recent developments, including DeepSeek’s notable successes, have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the U.S. export control policy and show how U.S. firms may ultimately pay the price unless the Trump administration takes a new approach.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez excoriated social media companies for a litany of harms in his Davos keynote, and above all for “harming the liberal order and the democratic system.” But the most startling thing was his proposed solution: radical reforms that would fundamentally curtail digital freedoms online.

President Biden’s parting condemnation of what he called the “tech-industrial complex” underscored how deeply entrenched demonization of the tech industry has become among policymakers—a stance they must change to ensure America remains globally competitive.

In response to the Supreme Court decision today in TikTok, Inc. v. Garland to uphold the law that would ban TikTok, ITIF released the following statement from Vice President Daniel Castro.

Last October, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed a sweeping set of remedies in response to an earlier court ruling that Google violated antitrust laws with its search business. While most attention has focused on the potential partial breakup of Google—the DOJ has proposed the divesture of the Chrome web browser and the Android mobile operating system—the proposed remedies would also have significant implications for U.S. competitiveness in AI.

From safer roads and efficient railways to streamlined air and sea travel, technology-driven modernization can transform the nation’s infrastructure—if the administration overcomes regulatory roadblocks and special interest opposition.

Mandatory labeling for AI-generated content, particularly through watermarking, is neither a reasonable nor effective solution to the issues policymakers seek to address. Rather than singling out AI-generated content, policymakers should prioritize building trust within the digital ecosystem as a whole.