Tens of millions of startups launch globally every year. Founders want to believe they’re building something unique, but crowded markets are the norm. And that’s good. It means the problem is real, people care, and demand already exists. That’s capitalism working.

And AI will only make markets more crowded. Products and services that once required technical expertise are now available to anyone with an idea. AI is flattening the skills curve for everyone.

On October 23, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was exploring equity stakes in U.S. quantum computing companies like IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum. The story surfaced just days before President Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which took place on the sidelines of the APEC Summit amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and tech restrictions.

The Commerce Department denied they were “currently” in talks with quantum companies, careful phrasing that neither addressed prior discussions nor ruled out future ones. Quantum stocks rose and remained up, even after the denial.

We're approaching a 1996 moment for AI.

In 1996, the Telecommunications Act became the first major overhaul of communications law in more than 60 years—and the first time the Internet entered the regulatory conversation. The companies that showed up helped shape the framework that governed their industry for decades. The ones that didn't? They lived with whatever was decided for them.

I’m reading six books right now—four nonfiction, two novels.
The challenge: the thickest is over 600 pages, and a few nonfiction titles overlap.

Inspired by a Supreme Court justice’s memoir I was reading, I asked AI: “Judges read a lot—how do they get through it all?”
The first answer made me laugh: “They have clerks.”
But the next suggestion was quite helpful: “And they use efficient reading strategies.”

I recently finished Bruce Holsinger’s Culpability, a novel that makes the abstract debate around AI ethics deeply personal. The story’s central dilemma: a family is in a fatal accident in their AI-powered self-driving car after the teenage son jerks the wheel. It also turns out the mother, Lorelei, designed the car’s algorithm. Holsinger shows how impossible it is to untangle fault when technology and human lives intersect.

While the book has many layers, it raises a crucial question for our own lives: what is our role in shaping AI’s impact?