The Best Preparation for an AI World: An Analog Education

Developing the capacity for deep work

Sep 01, 2026

American education is overdue for disruption. For generations, we have educated children in roughly the same way: grouping them by age, following a standardized schedule, ringing a bell, and sending them to the next class. Whatever the merits of that model, it was built for a different era, and as Americans, we should be asking whether it is still the best way to educate our children today.
It makes sense then that Alpha School, an innovative new education model, has received so much fanfare, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently praising it on CNN. Alpha School flatly rejects the “teacher-at-the-front-of-the-room” model. It rejects teachers completely, for that matter, while claiming that its AI can teach students “2x in 2 hours.” For a minimum of $40,000 a year, your child will spend an average of two hours each morning completing core academics through customized, AI-driven tutoring, then spend the rest of the day developing skills like entrepreneurship, leadership, public speaking, and financial literacy.
There is much to laud in this model. It embraces the very principles that the homeschooling movement has understood for decades: the traditional 7-hour school day is a relic, most children can be autodidacts with assistance, and parental ownership of the children’s education is non-negotiable.
Alpha School has released non-independently verified data to back up their claims, and their standardized scores are impressive. But measuring the success of their method on the motivated children of the top 1% is a little like asking Michael Jordan if his shoes helped him dunk a basketball. When the outcome is more or less inevitable, the interventions are cosmetic.
Replacing human teachers with software in the name of disruption is problematic, as is Alpha apparently surveilling children in their own bedrooms in the name of accountability. And I worry that Alpha’s AI-as-teacher approach and American educators’ broader embrace of tech in the classroom rest on an unexamined premise: that mandatory hours of screen time over traditional methods have no downside. Given what we know about how the brain processes reading on paper versus screens, as well as the benefits of writing over typing, both of these processes are crucial to recruit more of the brain to work together through neural integration, which then leads to more lasting memory.
Alpha’s gamified, metric-heavy approach is also concerning. Think Khan Academy, but infused with an Orange Theory Fitness metric-based vibe. The constant assessment, while motivating for some, can easily grind down the wonder inherent to a child’s constitution. And hotwiring a child’s internal dopamine regulation system to achieve results may also have long-term negative effects. Learning is not meant to be easy or even fast. Confusion, frustration, and failure are not bugs in the process. They are part of how competence is built, and technology that circumvents the human element is likely to be a long-term detriment.
And while knowing the etymology, spelling, and meaning of every word helps you ace standardized tests, should that come at the expense of getting to sit with your elementary school classmates, the windows open to the sweet spring breeze, while your teacher reads you Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” or E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web?” Can an AI replicate that experience with a screen and headphones?
By uncoupling judgment, depth, and emotion from knowledge through their choice of software over humans, Alpha seems to be arguing that knowledge in and of itself can beget judgment. But human teachers naturally pass on much more than sterile knowledge; they pass on how and when to apply that knowledge to the broader world through empathy and wisdom.

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Venezuela Oil Exports Jump 30%

Semafor:

Venezuela’s August crude exports jumped almost 30% from the previous month, as the Trump administration prepares to take greater control of the country’s oil industry. Washington recently took a stake in a firm — run by a former Venezuelan government contractor who faces widespread corruption accusations — in an effort to tap the world’s largest oil reserves and tame fuel prices at home.
Though critics say the deal risks entrenching Caracas’ authoritarian rulers and raises uncertainties for other investors in the South American nation, Washington has defended it as necessary to expand US crude reserves and refill the country’s strategic petroleum stocks, which have fallen to record lows as the Middle East conflict draws out.

Alejandro Betancourt, 46, runs the oil company that’s entering into an unprecedented partnership with the Pentagon. It gives America access to some of Venezuela’s vast oil fields at a time when U.S. reserves are low.
“No Betancourt, no energy-security deal,” a U.S. official told Axios. “And Maduro might still be in power if it wasn’t for him.”
Betancourt’s life story has an oil-like boom-and-bust aura, replete with billion-dollar deals, international intrigue, a longstanding money-laundering probe and even a Spanish castle raided by authorities.
Inside the room: As Trump demanded Maduro leave Venezuela last year, Betancourt played a crucial role feeling out Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez on whether she would run the government as replacement.
“There was no direct ask from Alejandro to Delcy; it was more getting a sense on where her head was at,” said a second U.S. official briefed on the private talks between the two Venezuelans.
Betancourt was in regular contact with Trump’s unofficial Venezuela fixer, Mauricio Claver-Carone, and discussed how to keep oil flowing and the economy running in post-Maduro Venezuela.
On Jan. 3, when the U.S. military seized Maduro, Claver-Carone was communicating via phone with Betancourt, who was also communicating with Rodriguez.
At first, Rodriguez “thought the U.S. had killed Maduro, that she had been double-crossed, and [she] was very angry and very scared,” a Betancourt ally told Axios. “He had to talk her down, playing the good cop” and finally persuaded Rodriguez to talk with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio about taking charge in Venezuela.
The backstory: Betancourt’s relationship with the U.S. government began in Trump’s first term, when Claver-Carone was the director of Western Hemisphere affairs for the National Security Council and the administration declared Maduro an illegitimate president.
Trump became the first world leader to recognize the head of Venezuela’s national assembly, Juan Guaido, as the nation’s rightful leader in 2019.
Betancourt acted as a go-between, linking Maduro’s opposition with Venezuelan political figures and top-level military officials to build domestic support for a nonviolent, democratic transition to a Guaido government, said an opposition figure and a member of Guaido’s inner circle.
Betancourt also traveled to Moscow to hand-deliver a letter on behalf of Guaido’s government asking Russia to stop backing Maduro.

I discussed this more on Morning Wire: