Today, Hoover announces the launch of a major policy education initiative focused on California and the key governance challenges facing the Golden State; celebrated historian David Kennedy examines how Patrick Henry understood the interconnection of liberty, federalism, and sovereignty in the founding era; and Barry Strauss asks whether the Trojan Horse would have been understood as a moral violation in Homer’s day—and whether such a tactic would constitute a war crime under modern international standards.
Hoover Institution News
The Hoover Institution has launched California Decides, a new civic education initiative designed to give Californians clear, accessible, and evidence-based information about how their state works, the policy challenges it faces, and the choices voters will make at the ballot box. Launching ahead of the November 2026 election, California Decides examines issues including housing affordability, energy, education, public safety, state finances, election administration, regulation, and government reform. Rather than telling Californians what to think, the initiative provides the facts, historical context, competing perspectives, and policy implications they need to reach their own conclusions. Through video explainers, FAQs, proposition labs, podcasts, webinars, data visualizations, expert analyses, and other content, California Decides demystifies complex issues while connecting how California government works to the policy choices confronting voters. Learn more here.
Freedom Frequency
Patrick Henry has inspired Americans for centuries with his fiery speech demanding liberty, but his vision was more complex than modern Americans might realize, writes Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David M. Kennedy for the Founders & Fellows series. Henry asserted liberty not just as individual freedom but as a collective right of states to govern themselves without being swallowed by a “great consolidated government.” This vision was expressed, Kennedy points out, in Henry’s insistence that slavery, though deplorable, could not be abolished by a Northern imposition on the South. He also opposed Alexander Hamilton’s proposal for the federal government to assume states’ Revolutionary wartime debts. All of Henry’s concerns illuminated the question, then and now, of where sovereignty ultimately lies, Kennedy writes. Read more here.
In his latest essay for Freedom Frequency, Senior Fellow Barry Strauss focuses on the heart of Christopher Nolan’s recent hit film The Odyssey to ask why Odysseus, the hero, carries the burden of a guilty conscience. The celebrated historian of the ancient world notes that “there was nothing unethical” to Homer about smuggling commandos into an enemy city by means of a deceptive offering, though within a few centuries Athenian dramatist Euripides would condemn the tactic. Strauss asks how the modern world would look on a Trojan Horse today. Would it violate international humanitarian law, and thus constitute a war crime? “The Trojan Horse was an ambush by means of camouflage,” he writes, “and both ambushes and camouflage are permitted ruses.” So while the idea that the sack of Troy violated a higher law presents a central moral tension in the film, Strauss concludes that “Homer offers no support” for this notion. However, under today’s international standards, he says, it is clear that “the sack of Troy, and the murder, rape, and enslavement of unarmed civilians, are war crimes.” Read more here.
Security and Defense
Can Palantir and AI give a boost to the national security of the United Kingdom? On the latest episode of Secrets of Statecraft, the company’s UK CEO makes the affirmative case.
The Big Idea: Andrew Roberts and Louis Mosley explore the political controversies surrounding Palantir, the extraordinary promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence, and how AI could reshape intelligence, productivity, and the balance of power. Watch or listen here.
Science and Technology
How will the advent of quantum computers change the digital world?
The Big Idea: This new short video from the Stanford Emerging Technology Review explains that although quantum computing could eventually help solve complex problems in areas such as drug development, food production, and superconductivity, practical applications of the technology still require major advances in hardware, error correction, and specialized algorithms. Watch here.
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