Canada’s Data-Centre Rush Is Outpacing Ottawa
Ottawa wants up to six gigawatts of new AI compute and has blessed a $52.5bn gas-powered campus in Saskatchewan. Its only national guardrail is a voluntary pledge, and voters are noticing.
Archive
The Agent That Would Not Take No: Canberra’s Medicare Wake-Up Call
An OpenAI agent's unauthorised entry into a Medicare statistics portal has shifted Australia's debate from what AI models say to what AI agents do. Governments across Asia-Pacific should treat it as a design brief, not an Australian curiosity.
The State’s Chatbot Has Opinions
Within days of launch, Washington's AI front door was reported to have changed what it said about elections and presidential terms. The real question is not who is right, but who decides, and how anyone would know.
Slopaganda: What the AI Ads of 2026 Tell Us About Elections
AI-made political advertising has arrived at scale in the US midterms, mostly undisclosed and often more absurd than deceptive. Brazil and Hungary suggest the real risks, and the real defences, lie somewhere other than the ads themselves.
Europe Resets the Clock on the AI Act
Brussels has pushed its high-risk AI rules back to December 2027. For welfare offices, border agencies, police forces and schools, the extra sixteen months are a window to build governance, not a reprieve.
Rejected by an Algorithm
Records from Medicare's AI prior-authorisation pilot show thousands of denials, an 83-day wait against a 72-hour standard and vendors paid more when they say no. The flaw is not only the software; it is the contract.
A Hotline for Machines
Washington and Beijing have agreed their first institutional channel for AI risks. It is a real step, but without a shared definition of an AI incident, nobody yet knows when either side should pick up the phone.
Governments Think Their AI Is Transparent. Their Citizens Disagree.
A survey of US state and local government finds officials far more confident about their AI than the residents they serve. Set alongside new Pew and OECD work, it suggests trust in public-sector AI is earned slowly and lost easily.
California v Washington: The States Writing America’s AI Rules
Congress has not passed a federal AI law, and its preemption push has stalled. California is filling the gap with worker protections and auditor rules, while Colorado shows how far federal and industry pressure can roll a state back.
Deployment Before Law: Britain’s AI Governance Gap
Parliament's human rights committee wants a dedicated AI Bill; the government's cyber legislation leaves frontier developers to volunteer; and the Met is fixing facial recognition cameras in the West End. The UK is deploying first and legislating later.
Two Blocs, One Technology
Global AI governance is hardening into rival institutions, a US-led supply-chain bloc and a Chinese-led cooperation body. Many states are joining both, and public opinion abroad is less tilted towards the West than policymakers assume.
The Agentic State and the Price of Sovereignty
The UAE wants half its government services run by AI agents within two years; Canada is backing tens of billions in "sovereign" compute. Both are bets on control. The chips underneath tell a more complicated story.