Welcome to the Tech Policy podcast. I'm Evan Swartzbrber. On today's show, The Future of Tech Policy. With such an open-ended and large topic, we need a large personality to talk about it. So I'd like to introduce to the show for the first time, Austin Carson, the relatively

new executive director of Tech Freedom. Prior to that, he was the legislative director for

Chairman Michael McCall of the Homeland Security Committee in the House. And before that,

he was a tech staffer for Blake Farenthold, another Texas congressman who we've talked about

on the show before because he's really interested in some of the issues tech freedom works on.

But without further ado, Austin, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, Evan, thanks for having me. It's an honor.

So I guess the first most obvious question is that you were in Congress doing all this stuff on tech policy, right?

You know, trying to bring people together, pass bills.

What led you to

leave Congress and come to our lovely little think tank called Tech Freedom? Besides the unbelievably

lucrative nonprofit arena. Now, honestly, I spent so much time inside of the Hill trying to work

with other staffers, trying to work with stakeholders stakeholders whether that means people that are making

cool tech stuff people that are modifying it or building on top of it or everyday people that are

using these products or would be benefited by an evolution of these products to figure out

you know what's the right path forward what kind of information do we need to get to that

right path forward what's holding of information do we need to get to that right path forward?

What's holding us back institutionally or practically? And the more that I continue to think about it, the more I realized that it was going to require more than all of us living in our silos, even as we tried to do things like when we started the tech staff association to help bring people together

and de-conflict, that taking a step back and looking at this in an overarching sense is the right

thing to do right now. Because in my personal opinion, we are on the precipice of a sea change in the

way that we look at technology, the way the technology impacts our lives, and the way that it's

deeply ingrained in our lives. I mean, right now now I think a lot of people, they have their smartphones,

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