"In the generative native age, passion is programmable. A nation’s policies should seek to ensure that reason, encoded in statute and protocol, governs the flow of the raw material—data—before passion can be weaponised at algorithmic speed."

— Aditya Mohan, Founder, CEO & Philosopher-Scientist, Robometrics® Machines

(From article: TikTok as a National Security Case - Data Wars in the Generative Native World)

Aristotle called law “reason free from passion.” In the United States, that ideal is operationalized through the Constitution’s architecture—most relevantly, Congress’s power to regulate commerce (Article I, §8) and the speech protections of the First Amendment (1791). Modern national-security and economic tools extend this framework: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA, 1977) authorizes targeted controls when threats arise from abroad; and CFIUS, created by Executive Order 11858 (1975) and strengthened by Exon-Florio (1988) and FIRRMA (2018), reviews foreign influence over sensitive U.S. businesses and data flows. These are the levers by which “reason,” expressed in law and protocol, can govern infrastructures that ignite passion at scale. 

Social media feeds are the new weapons. At algorithmic speed, they decide what we see, hear, and experience. Every like, comment, and repost is not just expression; it becomes fresh input—data and metadata that drive the next ranking cycle. The loop is recursive: passion generates more passion until emotion outpaces deliberation. In such systems, virality is not an accident; it’s an engineered property of the network.

History shows how the U.S. has responded when communications tech threatened cohesion. In 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act to address wartime manipulation via print and telegraph. In 1934, the Communications Act created the FCC and charged it to regulate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity” as radio reshaped mass persuasion. In 1940, the Smith Act (Alien Registration Act) targeted incitement and organizing aimed at violent overthrow in the broadcast-print era. Each move interpreted existing constitutional principles for a disruptive medium—tools for tempering passion when channels accelerate its spread.  

The same approach applies now. The First Amendment’s protections remain bedrock, but Congress’s enumerated powers and existing statutes supply practical guardrails for data-rich, foreign-touched platforms. Alongside IEEPA and CFIUS, state privacy regimes—notably California’s CCPA (2018)—govern how raw material (data) is collected, used, and transferred. Reason, encoded in constitutional doctrine, statute, and protocol, should regulate those flows before passion is weaponised at algorithmic—indeed, light—speed.