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Hoover Daily Report | May 1, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

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  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
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  Freedom. It's Friday, May 1st, twenty twenty six.
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  This Friday, Zachary Shore explains the surprising origins of wise decisions
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  across history, and how AI might be able to help leaders evaluate the wisdom of
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  different choices when the stakes are high; "Rowena He" recalls her experiences
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  teaching Hong Kong students about a Mao-era Chinese dissident; and Terry
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  Anderson speaks with Bill Whalen about the intersection of market-based
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  economics and environmental conservation efforts.
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  Wise AI for President.
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  National Security Visiting Fellow Zachary Shore has launched a new Substack, Wiser
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  Way. In his first column, Shore argues that amid the advance of autocracy,
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  global conflict, and ongoing climate change, “it’s wise leadership we need now
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  more than ever.” But, he notes, such leadership appears to be in short supply.
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  Considering the role AI could play in increasing wisdom in governance, Shore
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  says that with the right guidance, it’s possible the technology could excel at
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  ranking decisions “within a wisdom index.” Shore emphasizes that wisdom is
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  not “a binary function, where we are either foolish or wise.” Instead, he
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  finds, “we all make wise and foolish decisions throughout our lifetimes.” If
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  we view wisdom “as a continuum,” we can aim “to make ever wiser judgments,
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  knowing that we won’t achieve perfection.” Shore identifies three key
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  ingredients of wise decisions across history and provides examples of nations,
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  including Northern Ireland and Botswana, choosing “to reverse course” once they
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  “realized they had taken a terribly wrong turn.”.
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  Hope in Darkness: Teaching Lin Zhao in Hong Kong.
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  In a new piece for Freedom Frequency, Research Fellow "Rowena He" looks back on
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  her time as a university professor in Hong Kong, where she taught Chinese
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  history through the life of Lin Zhao, a onetime student journalist whose
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  principled call for reform in Mao’s China led to her imprisonment and execution in
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  1968. Hee’s students would be among those at the barricades and marches during the
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  Hong Kong protests of 2019–20. “When the students told me they were ready to die
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  for democracy, I begged them to think of those young faces: Lin Zhao, as well as
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  the Tiananmen students of 1989,” she writes. “We must live on for tomorrow,”
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  she told them. Banned from returning to China, Hee commemorates the life of Lin
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  Zhao, whose collected writings in the Hoover Archives evince a steady faith
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  that future generations
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  will read and respond to her call for freedom. “It is not an ending after all,
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  but another beginning,” Hee writes.
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  Like Oil and Water? Free-Market Environmentalism with Terry Anderson.
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  America, a land rich in growth and prosperity but also blessed with an
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  abundance of natural beauty, faces a quandary: how to keep its economy
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  flourishing while at the same time safeguarding its environment. This is the
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  topic of the Hoover Institution’s upcoming Markets vs. Mandates Conference.
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  Senior Fellow Terry Anderson, one of the founders of “free-market
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  environmentalism,” joins Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen on Matters of
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  Policy & Politics to discuss what’s on the agenda at the Hoover symposium
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  (tariffs, AI, federal-to-state regulatory shifts) and why trade-offs are the key to
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  America’s future. Anderson points to different regions of the US where markets
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  and mandates butt heads, including his native Montana and nearby Wyoming. Whalen
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  and Anderson also consider Virginia’s embrace of energy-guzzling data centers,
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  as well as a potential lithium bonanza in the Carolinas and parts of New England.
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  The Real Private-Credit Risk Is Opacity, Not Leverage.
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  “Private credit has become a major source of financial anxiety,” notes Senior
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  Fellow Amit Seru at Project Syndicate. But Seru thinks many observers of this
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  corner of American finance are “focusing on the wrong issue.” In his view, the
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  real concern “is not whether private credit is risky, but where that risk now
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  lies, and whether it is visible.” Citing his recent research on private credit
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  funds, Seru argues that “the central vulnerability in private credit is
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  opacity, not traditional leverage.” The valuation of private credit funds, he
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  says, tends to rely more on modeling and “periodic transactions” than on
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  continuous pricing. Seru emphasizes the need for regulators, including incoming
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  (if confirmed) Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh, to maintain visibility into
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  private credit funds and to accurately trace risks throughout the financial
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  system.
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  Hoover Institution Launches Bio-Leadership Summit (BLISS) at Stanford
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  University.
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  The Hoover Institution’s Bio-Strategies and Leadership (BSL) initiative convened
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  more than 350 leaders from academia, government, nonprofits, and industry at
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  Stanford University on April 14 for the inaugural Bio-Leadership Summit (BLISS).
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  The one-day summit aimed to elevate biotechnology culturally and politically
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  to the level of energy or AI and to pressure-test what leadership should look
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  like in an increasingly biotic future. Biotechnology was integrated throughout
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  the summit, including environmental biosensing technology from SafeTraces,
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  whose real-time pathogen sampler ran throughout the event and ultimately
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  returned an all-clear reading. Bioengineered food products such as
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  purple tomatoesenriched with naturally occurring antioxidants were also
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  featured. The summit program included panels, briefings, and remarks on
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  biotechnology’s applications across health, security, and the economy.
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  Featured Research Initiative: Fiscal Policy Initiative.
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  The Fiscal Policy Initiative researches potential solutions to the nation’s
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  fiscal policy challenges, providing a road map that promotes future economic
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  growth and opportunity. Led by Senior Fellow Joshua D. Rauh, the initiative
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  launched in 2025 with a conference exploring the economic consequences of US
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  fiscal policy trends, including extensive discussions of budget projections, debt
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  sustainability, international responses to debt crises, the effectiveness of
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  government spending and tax policy, and the interaction between fiscal and
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  monetary policies.
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  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Friday, May 1st, twenty twenty six.
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  Each weekday, we bring you research, analysis, and commentary focused on
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  public policy, national security, and the ideas shaping American society and
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  government.
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  The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is grounded in constitutional
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  principles with a commitment to sustaining the safeguards of the American
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  way of life.
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  Thank you for listening.
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  For links to all the articles and interviews mentioned today, visit
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  hoover.org slash, HDR.