@kristenrosec
Political theorist thinking about surveillance. Senior Fellow, FA Hayek program at the Mercatus Center, GMU. Host of Virtual Sentiments, a podcast on the today’s most pressing problems in political economy with an eye to the past
‘The aim of the threats is erasure: to unmake a community’s slow formation, with the same violence that contributed to forming it in the first place.’
@loubnaelamine.bsky.social on the Israeli evacuation orders in Lebanon, from the blog.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...
Innovation and Governance" now at econlib
www.econlib.org/library/colu...
So sorry for your loss. Thinking of you and your family. Love these memories you’ve shared. He sounds like he was a wonderful man
My reflections on Adam Smith’s critique of state capture, inspired by my interview with Maria Pia Paganelli to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Wealth of Nations this week:
open.substack.com/pub/kristenc...
And stay tuned for a post reflecting on my episode with Maria at my new Substack
open.substack.com/pub/kristenc...
Should be available wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts! And if you can’t get enough Smith, highly recommend this earlier episode with @nescio13.bsky.social
www.mercatus.org/hayekprogram...
Celebrating this week’s 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations with a fantastic conversation with economist and Smith scholar Maria Pia Paganelli on the season 4 premiere of Virtual Sentiments!
www.mercatus.org/hayekprogram...
On Adam Smith's Machiavellian (and Humean) functional criticism of Burkean style explanations
open.substack.com/pub/digressi...
One thing I find very funny about how academics/public intellectuals talk about AI (esp agents) is people really underestimate how much of this stuff is already and increasingly going to be about e-commerce, like that’s where a lot of the sure money is at
This is extremely predictable, and started quite some time back. In some training data, the Natural News alt-health site vastly outranked credible medical sources like the Mayo Clinic. www.jmberger.com/extremism/li...
Screenshot of Substack post titled “Introducing Theory of Virtual Sentiments” with subtitle “Political theory for life in the virtual world” at kristencollins2.substack.com and a background image of Lorenzo Lotto’s “Portrait of a woman inspired by Lucretia”
Tomorrow we air season 4 of Virtual Sentiments, a podcast on the ethics and politics of digital technology with an eye to the past. To mark the occasion I’ve started a Substack where I’ll share my thoughts on surveillance, technology, and liberal democracy
open.substack.com/pub/kristenc...
81 degrees and sunny in DC today and I gotta say good weather goes a long way in making anything feel possible (in a good way not in that dystopian way we’re getting used to)
Scoop: DHS ousted multiple privacy officers at CBP after they questioned orders to purposely mislabel records about government surveillance to prevent their release under FOIA.
KENNEDY: You said, 'Republicans think can troll their way to ethnic cleansing.' Did I read that correctly?
BIER: DHS tweeted for 100m deportations. That would be ethnic cleansing!
K: You don't think it's hyperbolic?
B: I think advocating 100m deportations is ethnic cleansing. Yes. Your time is up
Screenshot of Substack post titled “Introducing Theory of Virtual Sentiments” with subtitle “Political theory for life in the virtual world” at kristencollins2.substack.com and a background image of Lorenzo Lotto’s “Portrait of a woman inspired by Lucretia”
Tomorrow we air season 4 of Virtual Sentiments, a podcast on the ethics and politics of digital technology with an eye to the past. To mark the occasion I’ve started a Substack where I’ll share my thoughts on surveillance, technology, and liberal democracy
open.substack.com/pub/kristenc...
Denizens of BlueSky: Hope your inbox has room for another free newsletter because I have officially started a new Substack
open.substack.com/pub/kristenc...
On Smith's Machiavellian defense of Standing Armies with a shout out to @aoprea.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/digressi...
Today is the 250th anniversary of the publication of the Wealth of Nations!
Liberty Fund is hosting a one-essay-per-week symposium with contributions from Eric Schliesser, Maria Pia Paganelli, Dennis C. Rasmussen, Brianne Wolf, me (at week 5, for book V), and Craig Smith.
a lot of critiques in aughts alleged that pentagon was influencing video games and in truth the relationship seems to be the other way around
Read an awful essay one such person created using Claude and it disturbs me that he claimed it’s good enough to get published in an academic journal. Any editor who’d send it out would only be doing so to get feedback to who they would presume was a grad student, and reviewers would reject it
One possibly under-appreciated way elites value LLMs is those who build their career on fueling and exploiting hatred for the academy have a nice new and easy way to create propaganda for their cause
A surprisingly fun digression on Hume's debts to Polybius with multiple appearances of Machiavelli and Adam Smith (and some Plutarch) open.substack.com/pub/digressi...
Glad I’m not alone!
I’m not sure what this says about me but I think scrolling LinkedIn feels way more depressing than being on here
“If a wearer wants to make use of that AI, though, they must agree to Meta's terms of service that allow any data captured to be reviewed by humans.”
Excellent coverage of how CBP uses the real-time bidding for digital ads—the basic infrastructure of our modern internet—for surveillance. Also serves a a great explainer for why digital surveillance is impossible for an individual to just “opt-out” of even when it’s created by market actors
Partner and I coping with the misery of yet another pointless war by just periodically quoting this to each other
youtu.be/v8Ha6tNvRUg?...
The "rally-around-the-flag" effect is not some law of physics that works automatically. It largely seems to happen because 1) the opposition party stops criticizing the president or the military operation, 2) partially as a consequence, the mass media is flooded with pro-government messages. /1
"I moved to one of the most unstable regions in the world, within missile range of an internationally recognized rogue state, to a city built by 'Israelites in Egypt'-esque slave labor. The place where I live depends on every faction in unstable region mutually agreeing to not let shit pop off"
