Publications

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Written Testimony for House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Homeland Security

April 21, 2023 | Lars Schönander

Click here to download a PDF of the testimony. Chairman Dave Joyce, Ranking Member Henry Cuellar, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Lars Erik Schönander. I am a Policy Technologist at Lincoln Network, a think tank working to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and D.C. by applying technology and technical talent to

April 20, 2023 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Fischer, and members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network. I am writing to respectfully urge the Subcommittee to support the Comptroller General’s FY2024 budget request for the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

April 19, 2023 | Dan Lips

Today, I submitted a letter to Senators Bernie Sanders and William Cassidy, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, offering input on policies that the Committee should consider during the reauthorization of the Education Sciences Reform Act. Click here to download a PDF of the letter. Dear Chairman Sanders and Ranking

April 18, 2023 | Dan Lips

Today, members of Lincoln Network joined 13 organizations in signing a letter to Senators Maggie Hassan and Todd Young, applauding them for their ongoing leadership in the effort to restore full and immediate expensing for investments in U.S. research and development (R&D). Click here to download a PDF of the letter. Dear Senators Hassan and Young: On

April 17, 2023 | Evan Swarztrauber

Lawmakers across the political spectrum are increasingly focused on reining in the market power and abuses of Big Tech, particularly when it comes to social media. If the history of tech policy is a lack of regulation and firms avoiding responsibility for “moving fast and breaking things,” then there’s perhaps no more illustrative example than

April 17, 2023 | Jon Askonas

This piece was originally published in Foreign Policy. The recent leaks of classified U.S. military documents on the Russian-Ukrainian war count among the worst Western intelligence failures in recent history. Veteran intelligence officials, however, are shocked for a different reason: The particular way the top-secret documents spread—and the apparent motivation for the leaker. The information

April 14, 2023 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Diaz-Balart, Ranking Member Lee, and members of the subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony. My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network, a think tank focused on promoting innovation, strengthening governance, and advancing national security.

April 14, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Cartright, and Members of the Subcommittee: We are writing on behalf of Lincoln Network, a think tank working with policymakers and tech innovators to promote market-oriented ideas that strengthen American innovation. We write to encourage the Subcommittee to provide appropriations sufficient

April 14, 2023 | Samuel Hammond

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Hal Rogers, Ranking Member Cartwright, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Samuel Hammond, and I am Senior Economist at Lincoln Network, a nonprofit organization focused on promoting innovation, improving governance, and strengthening national security.

April 13, 2023 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Hal Rogers, Ranking Member Cartwright, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network, a think tank focused on promoting innovation, strengthening governance, and advancing national security. I

April 13, 2023 | Aaron Ginn

This piece was originally published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priority for the legislative session is to give families more freedom to choose the right school for their children. Abbott has called for lawmakers to establish education savings accounts to give parents direct control of their child’s share of school funding.

April 13, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Imagine posting content to Facebook or Twitter critical of the federal government, only to have agents knocking on your door a few days later, demanding your computer, and claim that you helped promote a foreign narrative. The officials come armed only with subpoenas, not warrants, and you

April 13, 2023 | Geoff Cain

This piece was originally published in Persuasion. In 2017, I was in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang, investigating how China had erected the most sophisticated surveillance state ever with the help of tech companies from both China and America. An estimated 1.8 million people, mostly Muslim Uyghurs, would be hauled away for such thought crimes as

April 11, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

Last week, Arkansas joined the national trend of attempting to kick social media platforms out of the state. The Legislature has passed the Social Media Safety Act, which adds age verification requirements for all new account holders in an effort to prevent cyberbullying and keep inappropriate material from children. But whatever the intention, the approach

OpenAI’s Big Lesson for Science Policy

April 11, 2023 | Samuel Hammond

This piece was originally published at Second Best. The incredible success of Large Language Models like ChatGPT is both a scientific breakthrough and a boon for future scientific discovery. As a recent editorial in Nature explains, …large language and vision models that can digest the literature will be used to identify gaps in knowledge, help summarize and

April 11, 2023 | Lars Schönander

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Andy Harris, Ranking Member Sanford Bishop, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Lars Erik Schönander. I am a Policy Technologist at Lincoln Network, a think tank working to bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and D.C. by applying technology and technical talent

Winning the Next Space Race

April 6, 2023 | Luke Hogg

Ensuring a Competitive Satellite Internet Market to Compete with China Technical innovation in the delivery of the Internet by satellite has the potential to close the digital divide and improve Internet services for customers in the United States and around the world. With China planning to launch its own “megaconstellation” of internet-providing satellites into low

Quarterly Activities Update, Q1 2023

April 5, 2023 | Zach Graves

Dear friend of Lincoln: I’d like to share with you some of our team’s recent activities, including new research from Lincoln Policy, project updates from Lincoln Studio, and other developments across Lincoln Network. Take a look at what the Lincoln team has been working on over the last few months. Policy Our policy team had

April 4, 2023 | Dan Lips

Click here to download the full report in PDF format. Executive Summary Improving elementary and secondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has been a long-standing priority for national security and American competitiveness. Today, the United States faces new challenges focusing national attention on the need to improve STEM education including computer science. Widespread school closures

April 3, 2023 | Zach Graves

Lincoln Network is thrilled to announce that today, Samuel Hammond is joining our policy team as Senior Economist. Samuel’s research will focus on innovation and science policy, state capacity, and the impact of disruptive technologies such as AI on U.S. institutions. Samuel was previously Director of Social Policy at the Niskanen Center, where his research

March 28, 2023 | Dan Lips

For more than a decade, the Government Accountability Office has been warning that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path. In March of 2020, for example, days before the pandemic was declared, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro warned Congress that “interest on the debt is the fastest growing element of federal spending” and that

March 28, 2023 | Roslyn Layton

This piece was originally published in RealClearMarkets. The failure of tech-heavy Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the initial uncertainty over its causes led to public fear of contagion to other banks simply because of the raw numbers — $212 billion in assets, including the high-dollar deposits of some of the most prominent tech start-ups. But

March 28, 2023 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Last week, Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced the Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from Foreign Harm Act of 2023, marking an important step in keeping U.S. farmland safe from malign foreign influence by reforming how the United states tracks foreign investment in agriculture. The law would reform

The Next Federal STEM Strategic Plan

March 28, 2023 | Robert Bellafiore

Last week, I spoke at a listening session on STEM research and innovation capacity convened by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Below are my remarks. Good afternoon, my name is Robert Bellafiore. I am Research Manager at Lincoln Network, an organization focused on promoting innovation and strengthening national security. I appreciate

March 24, 2023 | Dan Lips

The United States faces significant economic, national security, and educational challenges in 2023. The federal government remains on an unsustainable fiscal path. The United States faces rising international competition from great power rivals. And American students have suffered historic learning losses following prolonged public school closures that occurred during the pandemic. For more than half

March 23, 2023 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Aderholt, Ranking Member DeLauro, and members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network and a member of the Alliance for Learning Innovation coalition.[1] I am writing to respectfully urge that the Subcommittee prioritize research and

March 21, 2023 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in CoinTelegraph. With public trust in large tech companies at an all-time low, Congress is once again considering comprehensive data privacy legislation. But the rise of blockchain technologies and the nascent decentralized web mean that these comprehensive proposals are already behind the times. Without major revisions, these legislative proposals risk strangling decentralizing

March 20, 2023 | Lars Schönander

Today, I submitted a public comment to the Economic Development Administration concerning its proposed rules for the Implementation of the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub Program. My name is Lars Erik Schönander. I am a Policy Technologist at Lincoln Network. I appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment to the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA)

March 17, 2023 | Zach Graves

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member Espaillat, and members of the Subcommittee: My name is Zach Graves. I am the Executive Director of Lincoln Network, a market-oriented non-profit working at the intersection of technology, governance, and national security. A key part of our programmatic work has been

March 17, 2023 | Dan Lips

Click here to download a full PDF of the testimony. Chairman Amodei, Ranking Member Espaillat, and members of the Subcommittee: My name is Dan Lips. I am Head of Policy at Lincoln Network. I am writing to respectfully urge the Subcommittee to support the Comptroller General’s FY2024 budget request for the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

March 15, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

This piece was originally published in the Washington Times. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently grilled Attorney General Merrick Garland over a wide range of issues, including the FBI’s targeting of traditional Catholics and the treatment of pro-life activists, while ignoring violence against crisis pregnancy centers. Likewise, the House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

March 14, 2023 | Jimmy Soni

This piece was originally published in The Dispatch. On an SAT answer bubble, a single vertical mark through a letter counts as a response. Why does that matter? Because drawing a short line requires two fewer seconds than shading a full bubble. Across dozens of questions, that’s precious minutes saved. I absorbed this piece of testing

March 8, 2023 | Luke Hogg

This piece was originally published in Tech Policy Press. From education to media to medicine, the rapid development of artificial intelligence tools has already begun to upend long-established conventions. Our democratic institutions will be no exception. It’s therefore crucial that we think about how to build AI systems in a way that democratically distributes the benefits.

Who Owns the Farm in the U.K.?

March 6, 2023 | Lars Schönander

As U.S.-China competition heats up, lawmakers are realizing the extent to which Chinese companies and investments threaten U.S. national security. But this isn’t just an American issue; British policymakers should be aware of similar risks to their own country. In particular, the U.K. has a chance to learn from the latest U.S. area of focus:

March 4, 2023 | Lars Schönander

Today, I submitted written testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. I encouraged the subcommittee to protect U.S. postsecondary institutions from malign foreign influence by directing the Department of Education to enforce compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. Click here to download a

March 3, 2023 | Satya Thallam

This piece was originally published in The Hill. Early last year, an FDA advisory committee rejected a new lung cancer drug. The reason? They weren’t too keen on foreign clinical data. Later in the year, the developer of a potential variant-proof COVID-19 treatment that might even be effective against other viruses faced the same problem. The FDA rejected

March 1, 2023 | Luke Hogg

Today, Zach Graves, Executive Director of Lincoln Network, and figures from three other organizations, sent a letter to Speaker McCarthy and members of the House Republican Conference, recommending that they strengthen the legislative branch and its capacity for policymaking and oversight in the 118th Congress. The text of the letter reads: Dear Speaker McCarthy and members of

February 28, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

Data breach notification standards are important tools to protect cybersecurity. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), though, lacks congressional authority to expand its current notification regime to include “accidental” or “inadvertent breaches.” In a recent comment filed with the FCC, I discussed the need to ensure that consumers are notified when bad actors intentionally access confidential

February 28, 2023 | Jonathon Hauenschild

When deploying broadband infrastructure, service providers should not discriminate against potential customers on the basis of income level, race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. In a recent comment filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), I discussed the best ways for the FCC to realize its goal of closing the digital divide while preventing discrimination.

February 20, 2023 | Lars Schönander

This piece was originally published in American Affairs. Between 2017 and 2018, a single Chinese billionaire bought over 140,000 acres of land next to an American military base in southern Texas, and the government did not even know how many LLCs were initially involved in buying the land. It was not even the federal government that