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Don’t Trust TikTok’s Plan to Secure Americans’ Data

July 5, 2022 | Dan Lips

By Zach Graves and Dan Lips TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media apps, with more than 80 million U.S.-based active users, including an astounding 70 percent of all American teenagers. Through its rise in popularity, the app has been plagued by a series of security and privacy concerns related to its parent company, ByteDance, and its

June 30, 2022 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a PDF of the full testimony. Chairman Coons, Ranking Member Graham, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network. I am writing to encourage the Subcommittee to provide additional funding to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), especially for its

June 27, 2022 | Deepesh Chaudhari

Note: The author previously submitted an anonymous comment to NIST. This blog post summarizes material from that comment. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s recent initial draft of its AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) provides an important reminder for the future of AI: advances in artificial intelligence have the potential to provide

June 24, 2022 | Luke Hogg

Click here to download a PDF of the full testimony. Chairman Van Hollen, Ranking Member Hyde-Smith, and Members of the Subcommittee, We are writing on behalf of Lincoln Network to encourage this Subcommittee to provide additional funding to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and to direct funds for the hiring of additional staff technologists. In

June 23, 2022 | Reynold Schweickhardt

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chair Kilmer, Vice Chair Timmons, and Members of the Committee: I am pleased to appear today to testify about ways to improve the digital capacity of the House of Representatives. I will be speaking to structural issues that raise the costs of implementing digital initiatives

Japan’s Lessons for America

June 22, 2022 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally posted on Substack. After a decades-long hiatus, industrial policy is back in vogue. The Biden administration will invoke a law passed in 1950, the Defense Production Act, originally designed to build America after World War II, to raise production of everything from solar panels to baby formula. Industrial policy could address the shortages that

We’re Hiring: Operations Manager

June 22, 2022 | Grace Meyer

To apply, answer a few questions and submit your resume and cover letter here: https://form.typeform.com/to/P01ufl4V The Operations Manager will work closely with Lincoln Network’s Head of Development and COO and will be responsible for assisting with donor relations, event planning/promotions, and operations support; as well as other administrative tasks as needed. This is a full-time

June 21, 2022 | Lars Schönander

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, Ranking Member John Kennedy, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Lars Erik Schönander. I am a Policy Technologist at Lincoln Network, a think tank to help bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and DC along with leveraging technology and technical

June 21, 2022 | Luke Hogg

A coalition of lawmakers and advocacy groups is making its final push to pass antitrust legislation targeted at large tech platforms before the end of the year. But in the rush to rein in Big Tech, many conservatives have signed on to a bill that would do little to address their underlying concerns. Rather than

Don’t Rush a Bad Bill

June 17, 2022 | Luke Hogg

Democrats’ poorly-drafted antitrust bill will do little for Republicans, and its consumer backlash will undermine future legislative efforts Republicans and Democrats alike have grown increasingly mistrustful of large online platforms in recent years. But the basis for this mistrust comes from two conflicting lines of thinking. Whereas Democrats are primarily concerned with market power and

June 15, 2022 | Dan Lips

The Department of Education recently reported that public schools spent on average more than $15,000 per student as of 2019. But Americans continue to estimate that public schools spend much less. A May survey commissioned by EdChoice found that Americans think public schools are spending roughly $5,000 per child. Colyn Ritter has the details: Parents

June 3, 2022 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairwoman Lee, Ranking Member Rogers, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am head of policy at Lincoln Network. I am writing to encourage the Subcommittee to provide additional funding to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), specifically to provide

June 2, 2022 | Geoff Cain

“We are all in a social network,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking with Lincoln Network senior fellow Geoffrey Cain in WIRED. “This is our world now. It is divided. The internet is a reality.” On May 18, our senior fellow Geoffrey Cain sat down for a rare, hour-long interview with President Zelensky at the presidential

June 2, 2022 | Geoff Cain

Before he was actually president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian, starred as Ukraine’s fictional president in his three-season political satire Servant of the People. He played a junior high teacher who asked his students to leave the classroom one day so he could have a word with a school administrator. In private, he launched a tirade against

May 27, 2022 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Braun, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am head of policy at Lincoln Network. I respectfully urge the subcommittee to fully fund the Comptroller General’s budget request of $810 million for the U.S. Government Accountability Office

May 26, 2022 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman DeLauro, Ranking Member Cole, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network. I respectfully urge the Subcommittee to conduct needed oversight of the Education Department’s programs to identify ways to increase the nation’s return-on-investment

May 26, 2022 | Dan Lips

By Dan Lips and Deepesh Chaudhari On May 14, the foreign ministers of the G7 issued a statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and reiterating the importance of internet freedom. The statement read, in part, that the G7 nations would remain committed to promoting “the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression and access to reliable information from

May 24, 2022 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a PDF version of the paper. Authoritarian governments, including Russia and the People’s Republic of China, use information technology to repress, surveil, and manipulate domestic and foreign populations. It is more important than ever for us to present an affirmative vision of the digital world. Promoting internet freedom around the world has

May 24, 2022 | Lars Schönander

In 2022, the United States has entered a new era of great power competition and energy policy challenges. As Congress works to reform policies to address emerging threats, improving transparency of foreign energy investment in the United States should be a major priority. In the past, the United States recognized the risks of foreign energy

Lincoln Welcomes New Senior Fellows

May 23, 2022 | Zach Graves

Lincoln Network is thrilled to announce the appointment of two nonresident senior fellows: Jon Askonas and Richard Reisman. Each brings a wealth of policy expertise, augmenting Lincoln’s growing roster of experts. RICHARD REISMAN Richard Reisman is a nonresident senior fellow at Lincoln Network. Richard is an independent media-tech innovator and frequent contributor to Tech Policy Press, who blogs on

May 19, 2022 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Ryan, Ranking Member Herrera-Beautler, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network. I respectfully urge thesubcommittee to fully fund the Comptroller General’s budget request of $810 million for theU.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) for

May 18, 2022 | Luke Hogg

Just over two years ago, as the world was confronting the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States hit a record unemployment rate of 14.7 percent. Since then, the U.S. labor market rebounded as everyday life has mostly returned to normal. But digging into the latest unemployment data reveals a thought-provoking trend that should have sweeping implications for U.S.

May 11, 2022 | Lars Schönander

Acoalition of dozens of former national security officials including former cabinet secretaries wrote to Congress this week urging lawmakers to use the ongoing conference negotiations of competitiveness legislation to allow more foreigners with science, technology, engineering and math expertise to work in the United States. “In today’s technology competition, the most powerful and enduring asymmetric

May 11, 2022 | Dan Lips

From cyber attacks to overseeing hundreds of billions in federal spending, state and local governments face growing technology challenges. A new bipartisan Senate bill would reform a half-century-old law to allow federal agencies to provide technology assistance to state and local partners and encourage greater cooperation between government agencies. Under the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968,

May 9, 2022 | Luke Hogg

For decades, immigration reform has been a white whale for Congress. Despite bipartisan legislative efforts, executive branch buy-in, and broad agreement that the current system is broken, immigration reform legislation has proven elusive. Now that a bipartisan group of Senators has once again begun legislative discussions on the topic, there may soon be opportunities to

May 9, 2022 | Luke Hogg

The United States has long been a global leader in innovation. The birth and growth of new distributed ledger technologies (DLT) is one area in which the strength of American inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit has spawned a technological sea change. But the United States cannot afford to become complacent as global rivals work to develop

Can the Senate See the Future?

May 6, 2022 | Lars Schönander

U.S. Senate committees have various responsibilities. They evaluate nominees for executive branch positions, conduct oversight, and review legislation. Committees use hearings as a primary tool to find facts, analyze policy issues, and inform legislative and oversight actions. But a review of Senate-hearing witness-testimony data raises questions about lawmakers’ ability to anticipate national issues before they

Lincoln Studio Launches BIPBounty.org

May 5, 2022 | Brandon Detweiler

Lincoln Studio is proud to announce the launch of BIPBounty.org, a new project to support the open source development of Bitcoin. This new project incentivizes the research development and vetting of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) by creating a system for crowdsourcing tax-deductible bug bounties and distributing them to bounty winners. Lincoln Network has partnered with

April 27, 2022 | Luke Hogg

As the midterm elections approach, immigration policy is back in the news. With rising migration at the southern border and the Biden administration’s pending decision to lift Title 42 public health restrictions, illegal immigration will likely be a campaign issue in the months ahead. But there’s one aspect of immigration policy that deserves strong bipartisan

April 27, 2022 | Luke Hogg

As if like clockwork, the beginning of campaign season means that immigration is once again taking center stage in Washington. Amidst record breaking migration at the southern border and President Biden’s decision to end the Title 42 public health order, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, have been thrust back

April 25, 2022 | Luke Hogg

It’s time for the United States to wake up to the global challenges ahead, and the rivalry between liberal Western values and growing illiberal threats. Over the past few years, the European Union has taken an aggressive posture on tech regulation, targeting large U.S. tech firms and showing little regard for the global implications of

How (Not) to Waste A Crisis

April 21, 2022 | Evan Swarztrauber

In 2008, with the economy in free-fall, then-chief of staff to president-elect Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, told the Wall Street Journal, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” The line has become

April 18, 2022 | Dan Lips

With millions of people filing their federal taxes this week, it’s a good time to check in on the nation’s finances. Last year, the federal government ran a nearly $2.8 trillion deficit. That pushed publicly held debt to an incomprehensible $24 trillion , or more than $70,000 per person. Washington is projected to spend at least $1

April 18, 2022 | Lars Schönander

Some books are timely because their authors felt a need to address a specific issue at a specific moment. Other books are timely because history just so happened to make the subject matter relevant. Nicholas Mulder’s The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War falls into the latter category. Mulder sets to

April 11, 2022 | Luke Hogg

One of the most important components of the U.S.-China rivalry for tech dominance is the global competition for talented scientists and engineers. Federal legislation currently being negotiated could help give the United States a competitive edge if an important provision makes it into the final package. For months, Congress has been hard at work on legislation aimed at “[turbocharging] America’s scientific

April 11, 2022 | Zach Graves

Lincoln Network is excited to announce two new members of its board of directors starting in May: Mike Solana, vice president at Founders Fund; and Laurent Crenshaw, global head of policy at Patreon. Mike Solana Mike is a vice president at Founders Fund focused on community and brand. He runs creative programming including Symposium (F50),

April 11, 2022 | Zach Graves

Lincoln Network is thrilled to announce the appointment of two nonresident senior fellows: Roslyn Layton and Jimmy Soni. Each brings a wealth of expertise in tech and innovation and policy, augmenting Lincoln’s growing roster of experts. Roslyn Layton Roslyn Layton, PhD is an international technology expert who explains the economics, security, and geopolitics of broadband

How Punishing Big Tech Harms America

April 5, 2022 | Luke Hogg

Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing its support for legislation that would ban large tech platforms (primarily Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta) from a range of “discriminatory” behaviors such as self-preferencing their own products. The letter argues that the American Innovation and Choice Online Act

April 4, 2022 | Dan Lips

The 117th Congress may be remembered as a time of intense polarization. But the leaders of a bipartisan House committee have been operating below the national political radar to improve how Congress works. Their latest effort has the potential to deliver substantial taxpayer savings. Formed in 2019, the House Select Committee on the Modernization of

Lincoln’s voice

March 23, 2022 | Zach Graves

Dear friend of Lincoln: I wanted to share a brief note to update you about how our approach to policy is evolving. When I started Lincoln’s policy team in 2018, it was a team of one. Even when we expanded a little, it didn’t make sense at the time to differentiate our individual views from