Adam Thierer is an American technology-policy analyst, a resident senior fellow with the Technology and Innovation team at the R Street Institute in Washington, D.C., and a visiting senior fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) (Source: rstreet.org). He is associated with the argument for "permissionless innovation," the title of one of his books, and has argued for federal preemption of state AI laws in congressional testimony and in comments to federal agencies.
| Affiliation | R Street Institute (resident senior fellow, from 2022); FIRE (visiting senior fellow) |
| Previously | Mercatus Center at George Mason University (senior fellow, 12 years); president, Progress and Freedom Foundation |
| Books | Permissionless Innovation (2016 edition); Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance (2020) |
Background
According to his R Street biography, Thierer has covered the policy implications of the digital revolution since 1991 and has published books on online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, media regulation and federalism. His most recent books are Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom (2016) and Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Governance: How Innovation Improves Economies and Governments (2020). Before joining R Street in 2022 he spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; he was earlier president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation and worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. He served on the Harvard University Internet Safety Technical Task Force and on the congressionally created Online Safety Technology Working Group, where he chaired the subcommittee on parental controls technologies. The biography lists artificial intelligence, automation and worker displacement, and permissionless innovation among his areas of expertise (Source: rstreet.org).
Positions on AI regulation
Federal preemption of state AI laws
On September 18, 2025 Thierer testified before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet at a hearing titled "AI at a Crossroads: A Nationwide Strategy or Californication?" He argued that states were adopting "disparate, duplicative, and even contradictory regulatory frameworks" that would raise compliance costs, weigh most on smaller firms, and favour "Big incumbent players with the resources necessary to comply or circumvent this web of regulations." He said "Congress must assert its authority in matters of interstate commerce," citing the Copyright Act of 1976, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998 as precedents for federal preemption in technology policy, and recommended that Congress "expressly preempt state regulations related to frontier AI labs and models" and preempt state efforts to address "algorithmic bias" through AI audits or algorithmic impact assessments. He said "a moratorium or federal preemption would serve to balance innovation with consumer protection" (Source: rstreet.org). See State-Level AI Regulation and Executive Order 14365.
FTC inquiry on AI outputs
Thierer and fellow R Street senior fellow Spence Purnell were among the commenters who urged the Federal Trade Commission to withdraw its inquiry into ideological bias in AI models, whose comment period closed on July 31, 2026; coverage of the comments identifies the authorizing instrument as Executive Order 14365 (Source: broadbandbreakfast.com).
Data-center liability in Texas
In late August 2026 Thierer criticised a four-part "Texas first" plan from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton aimed at protecting children from harms related to AI chatbots, saying it would impose a "destructive theory" of liability on data center operators. Only the lede of that report was retrievable, so the plan's mechanism is not established (Source: insideaipolicy.com). See AI Data Centers.
Reception
Christoph Winter and Charlie Bullock's essay Radical Optionality identifies "let the market handle it," citing Thierer's "permissionless innovation," as one of the governance approaches it rejects, on the ground that a transformative dual-use technology with significant military applications will inevitably need some regulation and that waiting until national-security problems appear leaves government unprepared (Radical Optionality: Governing Transformative AI Under Uncertainty; Radical Optionality).
Relationships
- related: State-Level AI Regulation — advocate of federal preemption; Paxton plan criticism
- related: Executive Order 14365 — federal preemption order; authorizing instrument for the FTC inquiry he opposed
- related: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — urged withdrawal of the AI-bias inquiry
- related: Radical Optionality: Governing Transformative AI Under Uncertainty — the essay rejects the permissionless-innovation approach he is associated with
- related: Radical Optionality
- related: AI Data Centers