All articles from Nils Gilman
The Quiet Power Behind Policy: How Think Tanks Shape the Possible
The relationship between ideas and policymaking is sometimes imagined as linear: politicians seek solutions, and intellectuals provide them. In reality, the dynamic is more complex. The role of policy intellectuals and the institutions that incubate their ideas — think tanks, universities, and polic
Silicon Valley's Organic Intellectuals
"One of the most notable characteristics of any group developing towards domination is its struggle to assimilate and ideologically conquer traditional intellectuals — an assimilation and conquest which is all the more rapid and effective the more the given group simultaneously develops its own orga
Dictatorships & Data Standards, Revisited
As I wrote some seven ago in The American Interest, the integrity of government statistics is one of the essential foundations of democratic modernity. Systematically collected and disseminated government data — on inflation, employment, trade, demographics, weather, crime, pollution, traffic, pover