The Republic of Texas Radio w/ Steve OBrien, April 26, 2026 Hour 1

Pulling back the curtain on what may be the most consequential and least-covered story in tech right now: the global race to control your devices at the operating system level. We break down the new US bipartisan bill that would require Apple and Google to verify your age before your computer fully works, the EU’s “privacy-first” alternative that turns out to violate the EU’s own GDPR privacy law in at least three ways, and how even Linux — the gold standard of open-source freedom — just removed code from its kernel because geopolitics made it impossible to maintain. We also cover Europe’s trillion-dollar pivot away from US software, and what Switzerland, Germany, France, and Denmark are actually building. If you use a computer, a phone, or the internet.