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Hoover Daily Report | March 4, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

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  Welcome to the "Hoover Daily Report." Ideas Advancing Freedom.
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  It's Wednesday, March 4th, Twenty twenty-six.
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  Today, Nadia Schadlow argues that today’s conflict with Iran illustrates the limits
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  of an excessive reliance on multilateral institutions in resolving international
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  disputes; Russ Roberts shares his reflections on life in Israel during
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  wartime; and Morris Fiorina explains the implications of continued political
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  sorting for America’s electoral future.
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  Failures of the “Old World” Collide with the New.
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  Leaders at the Munich Security Conference warned that the post–Cold War
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  international order is being demolished—but what if that order
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  deserves to be called “failed”? At Freedom Frequency, National Security
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  Visiting Fellow Nadia Schadlow measures the record of multilateral institutions
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  and finds it wanting. Carbon reduction goals? Unmet. Campaigns against AIDS and
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  poverty and in support of human rights? Unfulfilled. And even now, she writes, in
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  a particularly acute case of failed talks and sanctions, Iran’s refusal to scrap
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  its nuclear ambitions has collapsed into war. What Schadlow calls the “deep
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  dysfunction of current global frameworks” suggests that the limits to a
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  global-first approach have been reached. Schadlow says a state-centered strategy
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  is a more promising way to reach durable outcomes, because states alone “possess
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  the political authority, citizen accountability, and implementation
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  capacity to act.”.
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  The Head of the Snake.
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  Writing at his Substack, Visiting Fellow Russ Roberts shares a deeply personal
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  reflection on what life has been like in Israel during the current conflict with
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  Iran, known there as the Second Iran War.
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  “Eventually we will know the consequences of this war and of killing Khamenei,”
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  writes Roberts. “But it may take a very long time to have a good idea of what has
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  been set in motion this week. Yes, it will remake the Middle East as people are
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  claiming. But whether it remakes it the way they desire remains uncertain.”
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  Roberts shares his experience of repeatedly seeking refuge in bomb
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  shelters, day after day and night after night, and notes the toll this takes on
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  civilians in Israel. Yet he closes by noting “the Iranians have a much harder
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  road to travel, a road my trips to the bomb shelter can barely help me imagine.
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  Every night, the booms there are non-stop.” Roberts expresses hope that
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  Iran will soon have a leader “who cares more about the flourishing of [Iran’s]
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  people than building a ring of fire around Israel.”.
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  Sorting Out the Future of Political Sorting.
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  Americans believe their country is sharply polarized, says Senior Fellow
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  Morris Fiorina in a Q&A published in Defining Ideas, but that’s more an
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  artifact of party sorting than it is a change in the great middle of US
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  political beliefs. Moderates are still the plurality of the electorate, he
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  stresses, but what has shifted is the two parties’ intolerance of variety in their
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  ranks. Each party then aims for total domination when in power, he says, even
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  though such ideological extremism alienates voters and leads to the party’s
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  undoing: hence the “unstable” in the title of his new book, Unstable
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  Majorities Continue: The Trump Era. He also looks ahead to coming elections and
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  points out why Democrats might be unable to take advantage of the GOP’s problems
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  unless Democratic elites “get back somewhere near the center of the
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  country.”.
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  Hoover Bio-Strategies and Leadership Hosts Second Bio Boot Camp for US
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  Congressional Staff.
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  Twenty mid to senior-level congressional staff from both major political parties,
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  both chambers of Congress, and relevant committees attended two days of intensive
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  biotechnology discussions at Stanford University. "Bio Strategies and
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  Leadership" or BSL at the Hoover Institution hosted its second bio boot
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  camp, formally known as the Congressional Leadership Accelerator for Biotechnology,
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  or sea lab) February 19th and 20th, 2026. Participants represented more than a
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  dozen member offices as well as the House Select Committee on the Strategic
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  Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the US-China
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  Economic and Security Review Commission, and the Senate Select Committee on
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  Intelligence.
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  Inside the Roblox Casino.
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  Writing at the Free Systems Substack, Senior Fellow Andrew B. Hall and coauthor
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  Branden Bohrnsen examine the design characteristics within games marketed for
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  children on the popular Roblox platform that resemble regulated gambling
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  activity. “The question is no longer just whether the platform hosts manipulative
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  games,” the authors write. “It is whether one of the core economic systems through
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  which children experience Roblox is, in legal terms, edging into gambling.” Hall
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  and Bohrnsen report findings from their exploration of 30 Roblox games, noting
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  the recurrence of “the same underlying architecture” across most games. “The
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  central finding of our research is simple: gambling-like mechanics aren’t
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  scattered randomly across Roblox’s trending charts,” the authors write.
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  “They’re concentrated, they cluster together, and they’ve intensified sharply
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  in games published after Roblox overhauled its Creator Rewards system in
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  2025.”.
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  Featured Hoover Publication:
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  Mobilizing for a Free, Open, and Secure Indo-Pacific: A Strategic Reassessment.
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  This paper from Hoover’s Global Policy and Strategy Initiative assesses the
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  current security landscape in the Indo-Pacific region and how the Quad
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  (Australia, India, Japan, and the US) can address these challenges. War with China
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  is the most prominent threat to the region and concerns all four members. The
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  paper sketches a variety of steps that the group could take, short of formalized
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  military cooperation, that in part or in whole could contribute to deterring a
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  regional conflict.
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  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Wednesday, March 4th, 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.