🆙 An Up Wing Trump agenda: what's realistic?

The potential good, bad, and ugly of MAGA 2.0

I want the best/most feasible Up Wing, pro-progress policy to emerge from the next four years. So what would that even look like?

My baseline metric can be found in my 2023 book, chapter 11, specifically: “Eleven Ways to Build an Up Wing Economy.” That’s a pretty good standard for me to judge what Donald Trump and his surrogates have said in the campaign, and what is being said right now. (Sorry, not incorporating Project 2025 at this point.) So here’s my preliminary analysis of what things might get done, or at least show forward progress, based on at least some my Up Wing, Conservative Futurist agenda.

🌑 Let's colonize the Moon.

• The argument: A potential Moonbase Alpha has useful resources (water, helium-3, rare earth metals, even lunar regolith ) and makes a logical first stop before Mars, offering economic opportunities (mining, energy, manufacturing) and a testing ground for deeper space ventures. “The moon is absolutely central to that incorporation of the inner solar system into the Earth’s economic sphere because it’s close, because it has low gravity, because it is resource-rich,” said defense and space consultant Peter Garretson in 2022. “And of course, if a foreign power can limit your access to resources, like on Earth you can see Russia limiting access to natural gas for Europe, you lose national security in that exchange.”

• Outlook: Trump seems to have a real Baby Boomer interest in space and is now close to Elon Musk, who played a huge role in the just-completed reelection campaign. And, of course, Musk’s SpaceX appears well-positioned to eventually establish a Moon base through its Starship program and declining launch costs. Toss in the China factor, and this goal has directional momentum over the next four years.

• Direction: ⤴

✨ Don’t strangle AI.

• The argument: This could be the ultimate invention. Just as Bill Clinton’s hands-off approach let the internet flourish, we should avoid stifling AI development with excessive rules. Heavy regulation now would be premature, potentially harmful, and impractical to enforce. Let the technology evolve while responsibly studying and monitoring its safety concerns.

• Outlook: Trump's proposed AI plan, according to The Washington Post, will center on launching military-focused "Manhattan Projects," reducing regulations, revoking President Biden’s AI order, creating industry-led oversight agencies, and prioritizing American AI leadership over China. Also needed: A comprehensive national AI policy framework that preempts state-level regulation. As technology policy analyst Dean Ball told me last May, “Basically say to states that we're reserving the right to do this regulation and taking it away from state governments. That's valuable to avoid a patchwork of regulation across the country.”

• Direction: ⤴